I spent some time in western Kansas with my wife visiting family a couple of weeks ago, and of course while she was doing most of the visiting I would go out and take photos. As was my evening normal if it looked like there might be a chance for a sunset shoot I would head out of town about an hour before to find a location and try for a photo. As I was leaving she asked me to stop at the store and pick up a few things for supper.
I drove out to a Location in the Cimarron National Grassland known as Point of Rocks. The bluff overlooks the north side of the Cimarron River. Point of Rocks has been an important landmark for travelers to this region of Kansas. It signifies the closeness of springs and thus water. Point of Rocks was an important landmark for travelers heading west on the Cimarron Cutoff of the Santa Fe Trail and for modern day ranchers. Point of Rocks is the third Highest Point in the state of Kansas with the elevation at its summit being 3,540 feet.
Point of Rocks-Middle Spring Santa Fe Trail Historic District, which includes the cliff, a spring, and four Santa Fe trail segments, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In my photo you can see the original Sante Fe Trail with ruts left by wagons.
As it goes when you are a photographer, everything looks good when you leave, but by the time I arrived it was pouring rain. I waiting a little while and was about to leave and started to a little lightening of the sky out to the west. I texted my wife the following image I shot out my car window while it was still raining:
I have learned that the best sunsets and sunrises are about 90% chance of nothing and 10% chance of great. Well this time it was great (at least in my opinion) and I spent the next 15 minutes taking photos in every direction until it wasn’t great anymore.
I did make it to the grocery store about 5 minutes before they closed.
My favorite image from this session is below, this is an 18 shot HDR Panorama. This means that there are 6 images with 3 shots of each image taken at different exposures combined into 1 final image. Click on the image for a larger view.
Here are a few more that I captured during the sunset.
Great Places for Great Photos
Let me help you to find a great location for your next photography adventure. I will list many lesser-known destinations, as well as the famous "Icon Locations" for photography. I will provide photos (Lots of Photos), location information, consisting of what there is to photograph as well as other information about the destination. I will give costs, maps, directions, contact information, and other essential information for a successful photo trip. I will only post for locations that I have personally photographed to ensure a quality guide to great locations for photography. If you know of great places that are not posted, please send me the details, I may just decide that is a place I need to go!
Greg Disch is a freelance photographer located in Arkansas. Greg specializes in nature, scenic, wildlife, and other outdoor subjects in Arkansas and other areas of the country. Most of the images on this site are available for sale as prints, personal use, or rights managed stock photos.
Greg offers both classroom instruction and in the field hands on photographic workshops. Classroom sessions are normally held in Fort Smith Arkansas, but arrangements can be made to bring a class to your group.
All classes and workshops have small class sizes designed to provide an optimum student to instructor ratio, where you can get the personal attention, you need. Most classes and workshops are limited to a maximum of six participants and will be held with a minimum of only two.
If you are looking for a wonderful opportunity to get personal individual instruction, I do private workshops and classes at a location of your choice, whether doing a location photo shoot, coming to your home or business, traveling across the country on a road trip, or at my classroom. This is a fantastic way to learn digital workflow and be sure that your computer equipment is properly configured for optimum performance.
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