October 2025.
Hollis, Arkansas.

On our fall trip last October, we stayed overnight at Hot Springs, Arkansas. As we settled into our hotel for the night, I was already anticipating the next day’s scenic drive. As the state’s first officially designated scenic byway, Arkansas Highway 7 runs roughly 290 miles (467 km) north–south across the entire state, cutting through four distinct geographic regions.

As we left Hot Springs, the scenic drive quickly turned into a rainy day of travel. From the back seat of the Suburban, I managed to capture the early fall colors through the windshield. These images reflect that rainy morning stretch through the Ouachita National Forest, where the autumn colors softened into the mist before the heavy weather finally convinced me to put the phone away.

This image was captured out the side window as we drove along a misty hillside. Along this stretch of Arkansas State Highway 7 (AR-7), the road winds through the Ouachita National Forest, and in the fall the colors can be beautiful—even though we were just a bit early for peak. While the southern end of the highway has its own autumn charm, the scenery truly peaks as the route climbs north through the Arkansas River Valley and into the Ozarks, offering spectacular vantage points for fall photography. I’ve scheduled this post for late August, so you can plan an AR‑7 scenic drive to hit peak colors, which typically occur in early to mid‑November.

About the photos: These images were captured from a moving car with my Samsung S25 Ultra, both shot in RAW using Pro mode. For the first image, I set the shutter speed manually to 1/30 sec to introduce a touch of motion blur in the wiper and the passing scenery, enhancing the misty atmosphere. I cropped it to a cinematic 2.33:1 aspect ratio, leaving just enough of the dashboard to anchor the wiper’s base. For the second image, I used a faster shutter speed of 1/500 sec to avoid motion blur and preserve detail in the leaves. The resulting auto‑ISO of 3200 required a trip through Lightroom Classic’s Denoise tool. Both images received a light touch of Accent AI in Luminar Neo to finish the edits. To view the images in 2K HD or check out the metadata, see them on my Flickr album here.

John Steiner.