Since I started shooting with my great friend, Jeff Clow, I am always on the lookout for road shots that lead to impressive subjects. He is a master of these shots and is known for them. He has influenced how I shoot and there is nothing better than learning from other skilled photographers. The challenge is to have a spotter looking out to make sure that you don't get run over by a car. Unfortunately, I was alone, so I parked in the pullout to the left and carefully went down the road to get the composition that I liked. Even though there was little traffic that morning, I shot from the right shoulder of the road in order to get off of it quickly.
Grazing in the Snow - Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming
One of things that surprised me on my Teton photo tour was that one morning we actually got some snow. I am not sure why I was surprised as it was still May, and it is the Rockies after all. There wasn't a lot of snow, but just enough to give everything a solid coating. After shooting at an abandoned dude ranch, we headed for other parts of the park and we spotted these bison grazing in the snow. The thin layer of snow proved to be a perfect background to make the bison stand out.
Teton View - Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming
I always like exploring an area wherever I shoot because you never know what you might find. Many times the results are a bit different that the standard shots. When our group got to Colter Bay, I headed north along the shoreline of Jackson Lake. I was trying to find a place where I could shoot south and make a leading line of the Tetons. In my haste of getting this shot, I totally missed this viewpoint. After taking my shots, one of my fellow photographers pointed out this composition, which was way better than the ones I had just shot. I am not sure who it was that told me, but whoever it was, thanks.
Floating Boardwalk - Coeur d'Alene, Idaho
After visiting the Palouse, I hooked up with an on-line buddy, Phil Kuntz, to spend a day exploring Idaho. Say what you want about social media, but I have met so many people online that have become friends, even though we have never met in person. Even better, when you do meet them in person, they almost always exceed your expectations. That certainly was the case with Phil. He is a wonderful photographer living outside Spokane, and his collection of images are impressive. You can see his work on his Flickr page https://www.flickr.com/photos/phils-pixels/.
Phil wanted to show me some of the great spots in Idaho, so we headed out. The light wasn't great but the companionship was. One of the stops was the Coeur d'Alene Resort, where we had lunch. The resort boasts of having the longest floating boardwalk in the world. I am not sure that is true, but it is long. As we were walking on it, I snapped a few shots of the boats and their blue covering. I thought the contrast with the amazing clouds was cool. At first glance, this looks like I processed this with selective color (I am not a huge fan of those shots), but I can assure you, this was the scene as it was.
Rainer in the Fog - Mount Rainier National Park, Washington
This photo is a perfect example of not deleting images because, at first review, they didn't look like they would be worth editing. I had left the Paradise Inn at 4:30am and headed to Reflection Lake to get a reflection shot of Mount Rainier. Rainier was visible from the Inn, but as I drove into the valley, a layer of clouds/fog covered it (see my shot of this from last week's blog post). Sure enough, when I got to Reflection Lake, I could barely see Rainier. Of course, being a never give up type of photographer, I shot a number of shots, not thinking that any of them would come out. I had to push the ISO to 6400 just to get some light.
When I looked at the images after I got home, I almost deleted them. Upon a second review, I thought that maybe I could get something out of them to make them presentable, not thinking that it was remotely possible. After editing it for a while, I began to see something that I thought was better than passable resulting in this image.
A lesson learned here is not to give up on an image too soon. Editing programs keep getting better and better, and editing skills do improve when you push the software.
Roaming the Palouse - Palouse, Washington
By this time, I am sure that you are getting tired of the Palouse images that I have been posting. Next week, I will be returning to the posts from all of my different travels that you are used to. I hope you enjoyed my images from this magical place. To close out my Palouse trip, here is one last image.
Earlier this week, I posted an image that I took on the last evening where I set out with no destination in mind. I ended up driving to the town of Palouse and then decided to meander back to my temporary home in Colfax. Along the way back, I came upon a high point on Clear Creek Road that displayed this scene. You know that the brakes were jammed and the camera came out.
Above the Clouds - Mount Rainier National Park, Washington
I have been posting many of my Palouse images over the past two week. I almost forgot that I stopped for a couple of nights at Mount Rainier at the start of my trip. I stayed in the Paradise Inn and, when I got there after driving from Seattle, there was no sign of the mountain. The clouds totally obscured it and the fog was pretty thick. I had been there a couple of times before with the same result. When I got up in the morning before sunrise, I planned to head to Reflection Lake to catch the morning light hit the mountain. The mountain was visible from the hotel, but when I got to the lake, guess what? No mountain. So back to the Inn, and I realized it was the valley that was fogged in, not the mountain. I headed up the Skyline Trail, turned around and saw this terrific scene showing the valley with a blanket of fog covering it. I quickly became a fan of the fog.
Saltbox - Eid Road, Moscow, Idaho
While some have heard about the Palouse (most of them photographers), the misconception is that its boundaries are well established. In fact, there are no official boundaries, signs or anything else that tell you where the Palouse begins and ends. The best way to tell if you are in the Palouse is to use your eyes. After a few days, the landscape tells you whether you are or aren't. Most of the Palouse is located in eastern Washington State, but there are some portions that lie in Idaho. One evening, we headed out across the state line toward Moscow, Idaho. There we stopped and shot this cool looking saltbox barn.
Compositionally, there were some not so photogenic trees to the left, so almost all of my shots had the barn on the left side of the photo. The sky wasn't the best so I minimized it in the photo. When I looked at this image before editing, it had a "tilt-shift" lens look to it which I retained in the final edit.
Old Time Gas Station - Endicott, Washington
I had a mental picture of what I would be seeing before I got to the Palouse. Farmland? Check. Undulating landscapes? Check. Barns and farm equipment? Check. Abandoned property? Check. Almost everything I had pictured was there with one exception. I hadn't anticipated that there were some classic cars to be found at several places here and there throughout the Palouse. The mother load was a private collection that we got access to somewhere near Endicott. I knew we were in for a treat when we pulled up and saw this old time Texaco station. What a classic piece of nostalgia staring us in the face. To make it even better, down the driveway was a whole collection of classic cars waiting to be photographed. I will be posting them in the future, but today it is the Texaco station taking the stage.
Shades of Green - Colfax, Washington
My last night in the Palouse, I headed out in the late afternoon with no destination in mind. I headed south toward Pullman, and I saw a left hand turn and decided to take it. Turns out this turn took me onto Hoffman Road, which resulted in some really cool landscapes. The shadows were starting to get long and different shades of green began to pop. I think I stopped every quarter mile to shoot some photos. The undulations of the land were outstanding, and it was a great way to end up my visit to this landscape wonderland.
Sidelight - Steptoe Butte State Park, Colfax, Washington
Steptoe Butte is the ideal place to shoot at both sunrises and sunsets. The low sun on the horizon at these times accentuates the mounds and hills with both light and shadow. Shooting at other times of the day, while still pretty, impacts the definition and three-dimensional look to the landscape.
The cool feature of Steptoe Butte is its shape. Generally round in shape, it is quite broad at the bottom and quite small at the top. At the top, you get a 360-degree view of the surrounding farmland. While that sounds like a great view, from a photographic standpoint, it is quite difficult to capture even with a wide panorama. Since the road to the top is circular, you can stop just about anywhere and choose whether you are shooting into the rising/setting sun or away from it. For this shot, we parked looking into the rising sun. While the rest of the group was shooting in that direction, I walked up the road to a more north-looking direction. I did this to capture the sidelight that gives the scene a different look without the glare of the sun at the top of the image.
Dijon Mustard Sky - Colfax, Washington
Sorry about the title of this photo, but after almost 800 blog posts, unique titles are getting harder to come by. As you can see in this photo, not every field in the Palouse is green. We had discovered this field the day before, but this time it was later in the morning and the light wasn't ideal. We returned during the evening hours, and we had better light and much better clouds. We had originally thought that the field was a canola field, but discovered after shooting it that it was actually a dijon mustard field. It was a challenge for us shorter people to get a good view of the field (we couldn't find a high vantage from the road) so I climbed up onto the step of my rental car and shot over the car roof. While I would have loved to have been able to capture the full bottom of the tree, it was impossible from our (or any) vantage point.
Fields of Green - Colfax, Washington
On my last full day in the Palouse, I was by myself, and I decided just to drive around and explore the area. After grabbing breakfast before sunrise (before 5:00am), I headed south out of Colfax in the direction of Almota. Along the way, I could have stopped every five minutes to shoot the outstanding scenery. I tried to identify areas that were different than what I had seen earlier in the week. Somewhere along Almota Road, I spotted this section of fields that had some great "wheel" patterns. I also liked the one-lane dirt road that led my eyes past the lone tree and seemingly to the brown field in the distance. This is what makes the Palouse so cool to shoot. The shape of the mounds and hills, coupled with the very few trees and dirt roads, makes every mile unique.
Abandoned Farmhouse - Oaksdale, Washington
The Palouse is home to some of the most fertile farmland in the United States. Sixty percent of the estimated two million acres that make up the Palouse are farmland that have active crops growing. To my eyes, this sounds low, but I will go with it. Given the size of this farmland, of course there will be farmhouses that dot the landscape, although you can drive many miles without seeing one. Of these farmhouses, there are many that have been abandoned. It makes one wonder why these are so and what happened to the farmers who once lived there. Suffice to say, they still sit on private land, but there are often no signs telling you so. This particular abandoned farmhouse was somewhere near Oaksdale and the grass surrounding it was quite tall. A number of us went to the open windows and took some shots of the interior. Given the high dynamic range of the scene, I shot a nine-bracket series of images and processed this in Lightroom 6's new HDR Merge process.
Classic Palouse - Colfax, Washington
Before visiting the Palouse a couple of weeks ago, I had fallen in love with the beautiful shots that I had seen online of the area. I hadn't realized that most of those shots were from Steptoe Butte State Park at either sunrise of sunset. Now that I have been there in person for almost a week, I am even more impressed with the area and have realized that there is so much more to shoot than the butte.
The Palouse covers approximately 4,000 square miles in eastern Washington and western Idaho, which is slightly smaller than my home state of Connecticut. It is tough to truly set boundaries to it as there are no signs or boundaries. The best way to determine whether you are in the Palouse is to use your eyes. There is a unique look to the landscape.
The rolling green fields of the Palouse are everywhere. The challenge is to find a place high enough to get a good view of the land. I saw this scene in my rear view mirror and knew I was stopping at the first place that I could find. After taking it in, I decided that a panorama was in order to capture the full beauty of what I was seeing. The evening sun illuminated the shape of the landscape with light and shadows. To me, this is the classic Palouse scene.
This photo is better viewed by clicking on it.
Grain No More - Pullman, Washington
When exploring the Palouse, most of the photographic gems are located on remote one lane roads that appear out of nowhere and take you to somewhere unknown. Not so with this abandoned grain elevator. This cool looking grain elevator is located a few feet off of the major highway that connects Colfax and Pullman, Washington. It was really cool to photograph, although a wide angle lens was required to get the entire grain elevator into the photo.
A few of us wanted to explore the inside of the structure. While abandoned, these structures are still privately owned, and, coupled with the possibility of collapse, we decided to shoot from the outside only. We photographed this in the evening light to capture the light falling on the front of the grain elevator.
Barn Light and Shadow - Endicott, Washington
One of the cool things about the Palouse are the barns, farmhouses, grain elevators and farm machinery that dot the landscape. Drive down a remote dirt or gravel road (often one lane) and you will stumble upon one. Many of the barns and farmhouses are abandoned, which leaves one to wonder what happened to the farmers that built these structures that are now unlivable, or in such disrepair that they cannot be used.
Many of these roads have no posted names, and it is hard to figure out where you are. We came upon this abandoned barn somewhere between Endicott and St John, Washington. As we shot the barn, I was immediately attracted to the back of the barn that had lost its roof, leaving the sunlight to create a light and shadow pattern inside. I particularly like the two windows at the back that give a glimpse of the landscape behind the barn.
Steptoe Morning - Steptoe Butte State Park, Washington
Just got back from a terrific trip to the Palouse in Eastern Washington State. It has always been very high on my bucket list, and when the opportunity came to visit, I grabbed it. Now that I have been there, I have only one regret - not visiting sooner.
The landscape is amazing to photograph, and the best place to start is Steptoe Butte State Park. The butte is the tallest feature in the Palouse area, rising about 3,600 feet above the surrounding rolling hills and mounds. At the very top, you get a 360-degree panorama of some of the best farmland in the United States. Photographing from the butte can be overwhelming, as it is difficult to capture the whole thing. Instead, it is easier to zoom in on smaller compositions that convey the beauty of the contours of the landscape that are more pronounced during early morning or late evening light. This photo was taken just after sunrise on my first morning there.
Road to the Red Hills - Kelly, Wyoming
On a rainy afternoon, our group headed out of Grand Teton National Park trying to find some drier locations. This took us toward the Red Hills, a bit east of the park. The road to the Red Hills is more of a dirt road and is narrow in places. A couple of us decided to walk down the road rather than ride in the car and get some different compositions of the countryside. As we started down the road and watched the road curve around, I thought I would channel my inner "Jeff Clow" and take a couple of road shots. Despite the lack of sun, the Red Hills still stood out and contrasted with the wet grass.
Catholic Bay Panorama - Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming
Just back from the Palouse in Eastern Washington State. What a great area to photograph. I am still fighting a bit of jet lag and will start posting some of my Palouse photos on Wednesday. Until then, a couple of Grand Teton photos.
There is a spot just past Jackson Lake Dam that just screams panorama. The pullout is long enough to fit a number of cars, and you get this great view of the Tetons in all of their majesty. The body of water is Jackson Lake and this particular part of the lake is known as Catholic Bay. I have heard this also called Chapel Bay, but after a bit of research, I found a reference to it as Catholic Bay on the National Park Service's website. Regardless of its name, it still is a jaw dropping scene.