Arkansas Fall Color Wrapup

I've just spent much of the past month documenting the progression of fall color in Arkansas from green leaves to bare branches for a new picture book project of mine - actually there is still a bit of color left down south and I have one more trip left to do this week. In all I shot more than 300gigs of images, 200 gigs in the past week alone. While it all started slow and dull I believe this will go down as one of the very best and most spectacular fall color seasons here in a very long while, if not ever - certainly the best in my 34 years of photographing fall color in Arkansas. Two things that make me say this - for one, the color was peaking across nearly all of the state at the very same time, certainly within a week, although the Buffalo River area did turn a little bit early as normal, but usually the Ouachitas are a week or two or three behind the Ozarks, but that was not the case this year. And the second thing was that the peak of fall color was from top to bottom (and very intense color)- normally the low areas will turn first and work up to the tops of the hills (with the leaves falling off below before the top turns color), but this year nearly everything was peaked at the same time from top to bottom, and also including early species like sumac and sassafras and blackgum - these were peaking at the same time as the maples and oaks and hickories and cypress. The color was widespread and very dramatic. In fact so much so that I often found myself not knowing what to shoot - when there is only one or two hillsides in peak color it is easy to shoot, but when you can go anywhere from the Ozarks to the Ouachitas to the swamps and shoot in any direction with any composition, that really makes the job a lot tougher, and it was. I spent many hours driving through incredible displays without shooting a single frame - there was just SO MUCH COLOR EVERYWHERE!

Speaking of cypress, I've wanted to photograph them my entire career but this past week was the very first time I was able to make the effort to capture them - oh lordy, the color in the cypress swamps was perhaps the greatest of all - absolutely stunning and unbelievable. As an example, I stood in deep swamp water yesterday morning and shot the exact same scene for nearly an hour - it was just incredible. I saw thousands and thousands of stunning cypress trees in peak color.

It will be months before I actually get in and have a close look at all the images I took this fall - not until I sit down to put the new picture book together next spring. I hope to put together a quick-pick online gallery at some point before the holidays, but until then I'm sure there will be tons of other photos posted here by the many photographers who got out to make their own spectacular images.

One final note - I rediscovered a new favorite lens - one I had used back in the 1970's but never really got the hang of. It is part of a new line of lenses that I've got for another picture book project on Arkansas wildlife - Nikon 300 f2.8 VR. I discovered that it makes a terrific landscape lens as well, and some of the very best images I shot this past week were with it, and many of them handheld (but don't tell any of my workshop students this!). I found that I was able to pick out many new scenes within an overall scene to shoot with this lens that I could have never done with any of my other camera gear. And the image quality of this lens is second to none - literally - and quite a bit better than other 300mm lenses I've used (including the original one back in the 1970's). For some of the scenes I shot a series that will be stitched together later, giving the resolution of a 30-40mp camera (or more), but with much better optical quality. Here is a link to one of those, this one shot in a series of verticals with the 300 - a portion of it might be used for the wrap-around cover of the new book. The original stitched file would make a canvas print about 8 feet long (native pixel size), and contains the data as from shot with a 64mp camera! You can count the leaves on the individual trees.

View from Flatside Pinnacle

So here is to one of the greatest fall seasons ever - I hope everyone was able to get out and enjoy and burn up a lot of your own memory, and make many great new ones!

Just got back from a weekend jaunt down to the Big Woods, where I ran into Gale Rainwater. That is some incredible backcountry down there for sure!

That's a beautiful pano of Flatside...looking forward to seeing your new book!

It must have been some kind of color if you've never seen it better Tim. An amazing array of color in the pano of Flatside. Looking forward to seeing the fruits of your work this fall.

The Big Woods was just spectacular - I suspect there will be lots of ink carts being delivered to the Dark and Rainwater houses in the near future! Have you guys EVER seen the cypress like that? Holy cow, it was amazing...

Tim I haven't seen cypress tress with color like that EVER and like you said the other species of trees around were also filled with great multi colors also...

I must give Tim a great big THANK YOU for publishing the nature lovers guide book.

Ditto to what Gale said. It was just incredible! I could spend a long time shooting down there - we just scratched the surface. There are hundreds of these little oxbow lakes, and I only saw a dozen or so. The sad part is that one of the wildlife officers told me that many of the lakes are usually almost dry this time of year, so shooting opportunities may be limited next year.

Another issue is that many of the best areas at the White River refuge are closed to the public from November 1st - to the end of February and NO ONE is allowed in there (in fact my favorite lake of all is in the middle of this area). Many other areas are closed from December 1st until the end of February. These areas are flooded during the winter to allow for waterfowl a place to rest and keep away from hunters. So this is mostly an early fall and spring area to shoot. I have highlighted some of the very best places in the guidebook for great swamp photos - but they are not limited to the White River National Wildlife Refuge where Bill and Gale were, but also a lot of other great swamps too like Apple Lake, Cache River, Seven Devils Swamp, Lake Grumpus, Lake Chicot, and many others (I visited most of them last week as well and got some great images!).

And YES, that guidebook was put together with great photo ops in mind and you can certainly get some good ones in all of those places - 101 of the very best in Arkansas, but of course, there are many thousands of others too all over the state! I'm happy that so many of you are taking advantage of the info/maps in the guidebook - I just wish most of you would move to other states since I don't need the competition! I guess it is my own fault - I teach workshops and then show everyone where to go for great photo ops! Oh well, it is great to see so much great material coming from you guys...

The White River Refuge is a great place to shoot. You can camp the month of September I think. They do keep changing the rules. Lots of wildlife in there. The last time I camped there I saw bears and lots of other wildlife. My camp was approached by a big cat about midnight who made some pretty un-nerving sounds. Beautiful place!
Glenn

The guys at the refuge are really great to work with, however you can't always rely on info you are told by some of the staff up front or who answer the phone - I was told twice last week it was OK to enter the restricted zone, however it is strictly illegal to enter and would have been costly. They need to train their volunteer staff better. As far as I know camping is allowed just about anywhere (that is open) at any time - just note that their "campgrounds" are nothing but a location - there are very few picnic tables - most have none - and no water or toilet facilities anywhere - you are really just on your own, which is fine with me most of the time - all I need is a level spot to pitch my tent for a few hours. Much of the refuge is closed from Nov 1 - the end of February, and much more of it is closed from Dec. 1 - the end of February, so early fall and spring are the best seasons.

By the way, I have a funny story to tell about this place. When I first started doing research on this refuge I saw an obscure reference on a map somewhere to the "champion cypress tree" - that was all the map said - did not give a location. After I stumbled around the refuge a few days (finding the magnificent Goose Lake in the process) I stopped to talk to the folks at the refuge headquarters. They had never heard of the tree, but did direct me to a couple of other "champion" trees in the area. I kept pressing and finally found a guy who did know about the tree but did not know where it was located. I kept pressing him and eventually he found out an area where one of the foresters thought the tree might be. I made a couple of trips into the area to hunt for the big tree and found several that looked promising, then brought back photos to show the refuge staff. Not the correct one. By the time of my next visit one of the foresters had produced a GPS coordinate of the tree - or at least it was close to where the tree was supposed to be. I went back in and hunted around and did not find the tree there. But I did discover it at last one day nearby - no mistaking this tree as it is a GIANT that towers over everything else (there is a photo of it in both the nature lover's guidebook and in the new Arkansas Landscapes book - the author photo). There was no trail to this tree (since most of the staff did not even know the tree was there), but there was a trail going to a nearby lake - actually it was just an old road that four-wheelers used for hunting access. I put a description of the route to the big tree in the Nature Lover's Guidebook, including the last couple of hundred yards of bushwhacking, along with the correct GPS coordinates, and then named the "route" Champion Tree Trail. I am HAPPY TO REPORT that now the refuge staff knows all about the tree, and in fact has not only constructed a nice wide trail that goes directly to the big tree, but also adopted my name for the trail - Champion Cypress Tree Trail. They even installed a nice wide bench right in front of the tree and opened up the vegetation so you can sit and get a good look at this monster - all of this is a really nice gesture by the refuge staff to make the refuge more accessible to the public - and I'm sure also as a result of hundreds of folks coming to the headquarters wanting to know about the champion tree after seeing it in the guidebook - books like this are effective in making things like this happen, and sometimes I will put a feature in the guidebook in hopes this very same thing will happen - and it WORKED! Oh yes, and now they prohibit four-wheelers from this trail too!

This refuge is just one part of the greater "Big Woods" - a protected strip of bottomland hardwoods that stretches for 500,000 acres - much of it coming to light since the rediscovery of the ivory bill woodpecker in one of the northern tracks near Brinkley. Some of the best photo ops are details in the Arkansas Nature Lover's Guidebook as others have noted...