The Creek Was Angry That Day, My Friends …

… like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli.

I had been to Longpool Falls in Pope County north of Russellville back in January, but I didn’t get any photos worth looking at. So when a huge deluge hit that part of the state on Friday I decided to go back and see it when it had something to show. When I got up at 7:30 a.m. Saturday the rain had made it to Little Rock, but it was still raining in Pope County. I drove through torrential rain all the way there and the rain the didn’t stop. The top photo is a two-frame panorama of Longpool Falls and the ravine downstream.

The rain alternated between a downpour and a torrential downpour with some thunder and lightning thrown in for good measure. The raging waterfall created its own wind. The leaves on several of the trees are blurry because they were whipping in the waterfall wind. I climbed up under a huge rock overhang to wait out the rain but it never stopped. Every now and then I’d venture out in the wind and spray and shoot a few pics until I’d start worrying the camera was getting too wet.

The spray from the waterfall had mud in it. In order to cut down on the light coming into the lens and thereby lengthen the exposures, I had a polarizer stacked onto a neutral density filter screwed to the lens. The first time I wiped off the polarizer I was surprised to see mud streaks on my little towel. It was so dark, I didn’t need the ND filter so I took it off and promptly dropped it, knocking a big chip out of the glass.

This is the creek down below the big waterfall. When I was there in January there was a small waterfall and I was able to jump across the creek. I waded out into the middle to get this shot.

On the way back to Little Rock, I stopped off at Petit Jean State Park to see how the rain was treating the 90-foot-tall Cedar Falls, which is probably the most visited waterfall in the state. It looked like a scene out of the Amazon. The plunge pool was a raging cauldron and spray was rising hundreds of feet in the air.

I caught a lull in the storm and was able to shoot a few pics from high on the canyon rim before another wave of rain came in. It’s about a mile hike down to the bottom of the falls and I didn’t feel like making that trek in the storm.

I did drive around to the other side of the canyon to the scariest overlook in probably the whole country. There’s a small viewing stand with a rickety wooden rail right on the edge of a cliff that’s probably 150 feet high. I carefully positioned my tripod on the outside of the rail and pointed the camera down just as the rain really got going. Right before I snapped this shot a bolt of lighting hit nearby and thunder shook the hills. I hit the shutter and then booked back to the truck in a low crouch to present a lower profile to the lightning. I know the photo sucks, but I’ve got to show it so that I didn’t go onto that death trap for nothing.

The Davies Bridge crosses Cedar Creek above the waterfall and this is a classic scene in Arkansas nature photography. Normally the waterfall as seen under the bridge is little more than trickle.

This is another two-frame pano.

I also shot some video of both waterfalls with my D90.