Red Barn - Steptoe Butte State Park, Washington

Early morning on the second highest point in the Palouse (the highest point is Kamiak Butte, mere feet higher) is a magical time to capture the play of light and shadow. As you stand on top of this 3,612 foot butte, there is nothing but rolling farmland as far as the eye can see. The few buildings that dot the landscape are farmhouses, barns and grain elevators. When the sun is low, the rolling hills are bathed in shadows and light that slowly change from dark to bright over a relatively short period. That is when the magic happens. Because of the vastness of the landscape from above, a telephoto lens is a requirement to zoom into the scene. The decision from there is the photo's composition, picking out a structure that becomes the anchor to the photo. In this case, I picked this red barn as my anchor.