Sunrise on Magazine Mountain, Arkansas

Today I was up early to photograph the sunrise. Part of my ride yesterday involved scouting a good spot and I think that I found one….

I hiked about 15 minutes from camp in the pitch dark. It was still dark enough to point my lens southwestward and capture the Milky Way as if faded into the dawn light.

Shooting sunrise photos from the top of a mountain is quite magical. The air is cool, there is no wind, from the distance, I can hear the traffic building in the valley below and the roar of a waterfall off in the trees. The progression of these images takes place over about an hour and a half. It gives me lots of time to reflect, forest bathing I believe it is called!

I scurried around the top of this cliff trying not to mis-step while getting different angles and content.

Layers! One of my photography mentors urged me to capture layers and they were on full display this morning.

A couple more days and the dogwood in the bottom right will be in full bloom.

A quick change in settings and I stretched my lens to capture the distant waterfall.

The moment of sunrise shows up right on time. 7:07 AM

Luckily, there was just enough moisture in the air to provide a nice orange glow…. Today is going to be a good day!

I packed up my camp site and headed to Bentonville which was about 2 hours away. I’m skipping ahead just a bit here because I did stop along the way to do a mountain bike ride. Those images just seemed a little out of place in this blog so I will do it separately. Stay tuned! Meanwhile, I arrived at my new camp, made an early dinner, then went out for an evening walk.