I had been chomping at the bit to get outside, explore, and take some pictures.  I had surgery just before Christmas which has kept me indoors for the most part.  I finally found time to break away and visit Petit Jean State Park!  The crazy thing was, it was mid-January and almost hit 70 degrees that day!  Typical Arkansas though... 1 day later and we're looking at possible flooding and maybe even ice storms on Sunday.  My brother joined me again as we set out on this journey.  We only had a few hours so we went at a pretty quick pace! Our first stop was Bear Cave Trail.  This leads...

I've learned that landscape photography puts you into some interesting situations.  If you really want a certain shot, you have to be willing to look a little crazy!  I've been wanting a sunrise shot over Lake Hamilton for awhile but wasn't quite sure where to go.  I used my favorite website, SunCalc, to see where the sunrise was coming from this time of year.  I guessed that the boat dock for the Clarion Hotel would be ideal so I headed that way when I noticed the great cloud formations in the sky this morning.  People really underestimate the time and effort that goes into planning landscape...

I posted an article before about how to shape your bokehs, but I didn't really talk about basic bokeh principles.  So, what in the world is bokeh!?  The word refers to the blurring effect you get with light in your photos.  In particular, most people think of portraits where the subject is sharp and in focus, but the background highlights are blurred into sphere shape or maybe something like an octagon.  This gives a nice, appealing photo.  It can also be used creatively to get other effects like I've done in these photos.