Photography – Page 14

Hawksbill Crag

By Don on Sunday, May 11, 2008

Dad and I drove down to the Buffalo National River and hiked to Whitaker Point and visited Hawksbill Crag, perhaps the most photographed natural feature in Arkansas. On the drive down we encountered a huge thunderstorm, part of a swarm of storms in Oklahoma, Missouri and Arkansas that killed a bunch of people. We pulled off under a tree when the hail got too bad. As we started off down the trail, we heard the ominous sound of thunder. We planned to visit Upper Haley’s Falls and then go on to Hawksbill Crag. Tim Ernst named the falls in his waterfall guidebook after Haley Zega who got lost in the area in the 2001. I suggested that the waterfall probably had a huge overhang — because most waterfalls in the area do — and we could take refuge under it if need be.

Abby Family Fun Photography

All the pretty flowers

By Don on Monday, May 5, 2008

We spent Saturday afternoon at the Northwest Arkansas Botanical Garden, which is either in south Springdale or north Fayetteville, it’s hard to tell which. I was pretty impressed that NWA has such a flowerdy place. I was expecting a few ferns and maybe a pine tree, but the gardens are fairly extensive. It’s still early in the spring and some gardens are still under construction, so it should be better in a month or so.

Abby got a big kick out of the little ponds scattered all over the place. She spent a long time in the unfinished Japanese garden throwing decorative stones into the little pond. Each time a rock hit the water, she yelled out “blooop!” and clapped like crazy. We also saw a lizard eat a cricket. That wasn’t part of the garden show, we just got lucky. Abby really liked that because she’s really into lizards right now.

I was practicing using fill flash and I think it made the flowers pop a little too much in the above photo. I need to work on using the flash compensation button to dial it down a little, I think. The photos posted over on flickr look a little better.

Abby Photography

The many moods of Abby

By Don on Sunday, May 4, 2008

Abby was having a good hair day, so I got her in the dining room in front of the big window to get some nice light. I used my 50 mm F/2.8 lens, which won’t autofocus on my D40. Because the lighting called for a large aperture, it was hard to get the pictures focussed well, what with her jumping around and wanting to sit in my lap to see the pics. These three aren’t supersharp, but they’ll do. Also I’m not proficient yet on sharpening photos for the blog, so I think they suffer from that, too. But they look pretty good, I think.

Arkansas Hiking Landscape Photography Waterfall

Glory Hole

By Don on Tuesday, April 29, 2008

the drop 2, originally uploaded by dldailey32.

I’ve always loved waterfalls and with all the water that’s fallen from the sky this spring, the water falling from the rocks has been spectacular. I tried taking photos of them in the past with film, but I just didn’t do it enough to become proficient. The lag time between shooting and developing film and seeing mistakes and remembering them and correcting them the next time out was too arduous for me. I’d rather just go play golf with its instant feedback. But with a digital camera I can shoot, check out the LCD, spin some dials, push some buttons and try again until I get something I like.

Now, I’m not disappointed with the exposure, but a lot of times I’m disappointed with the composition. I did like the composition on this shot of the underside of the Glory Hole near Fallsville in the Ozark National Forest.

I’ve gone kind of goofy on photographing the waterfalls. I bought the Tim Ernst waterfall guidebook and I’ve been mapping out what falls I want to see before they dry up this year. Gina, Abby and I went out Saturday looking for King’s River Falls and it was a total bust. It was sunny and we were out too early in the day. Abby got grouchy after 3 hours of riding around, which meant Gina was grouchy and I was grouchy. After all that we didn’t even get to see King’s River Falls because the road was too washed out for Gina’s Honda Accord to navigate.

Family Fun Photography

Heavy sleeper

By Don on Tuesday, April 29, 2008

heavy sleeper, originally uploaded by dldailey32.

This is a test post from Flickr. Cross your fingers.

Photography

The answer, my friend

By Don on Friday, April 25, 2008

Abby, Gina and I took one of our many neighborhood walks on Thursday. I snapped these dogwood blossoms blowing in a stiff wind in the late afternoon sunlight. I loves me some dogwoods. Some in this area have been truly spectacular this year. Last year they got zotted in the epic April freeze.

My 30-day trial of Photoshop CS3 ran out and I haven’t wrangled another copy, so I downloaded a free trial of Lightroom. Lightroom doesn’t do all the neat stuff PS does, but it does have camera raw and I can always go back to using The Gimp. Anyway, Lightroom has these presets, one of which makes photos look aged. That’s what I used on this dogwood photo. I like the effect.

Abby is a big fan of picking stuff up and examining it. She amazes me by generally knowing what to pick up and what not to. She’ll always pick up acorns and worms and ladybugs. She won’t pick up spiders and snakes. So far, at least. While we were on our walk she bent over until her face almost touched the ground and yelled, “Caterpillar.” A closer inspection by Gina revealed the caterpillar was actually one of those pollen pods from an oak tree. Abby said, “Oh” and moved on to other things.

Arkansas Hiking Landscape Photography Waterfall

Rattlesnake Falls

By Don on Friday, April 25, 2008

This shot of Rattlesnake Falls in the White Mountain Area of Northwest Arkansas is currently my favorite shot. You can see it on my Flickr page here where it looks better for some reason.

I used a neutral density filter and a polarizer to get a slow enough shutter speed to make the water go all blurry. I worked up the pic in photoshop using some skills I picked up from Scott Kelby’s 7-Point System for Photoshop. It’s a great book. I recommend it.