I love, simply love using long glass for landscape photography! You can say vastness, you can create visual depth (foreground, middle ground, background), and you can even include some known object to introduce scale if you just include one more element into the mix. And that’s altitude! It might be just a small mound, could be from the roof of your vehicle, in this case, it’s a few hundred feet up on Steptoe Butte. But getting above the landscape makes it all work with long glass. I wanted to speak about the rolling hill carpet that is The Palouse and that requires shadows. I didn’t want hard shadows but soft ones which required a low sun. One of the best ways to end the day is to watch the sun race for the west from the top of Steptoe Butte. As the sun sets hundreds of great shots are all around you waiting to be captured as a long glass landscape.

Where’s the Grain Go? The Palouse is vast and its crops literally feed the world. But where does it do before we get it? The Palouse has grain elevators dotting the landscape almost as much as the grain. You find them tucked in all sorts of out-of-the-way places like this. You’re driving down gravel roads out in the middle of nowhere and you’ll come across them. Many, like this make great subject, their silvery metallic rigidness contrasty to the soft, wavy Palouse. We saw no sun today but the saturated light and the clouds were killer. It’s the magic of The Palouse as you solve the mystery of where’s the grain go?

This time of year, the sun barely rests in Kodiak setting after 23:00 and up before 06:00. I enjoy greeting the sun, it always seems to have something to say. This morning it painted the skies in warmth, color that was reflected off the peaks surrounding my perch on the cliff. As I did a 360, there was no clear view in any direction, the color peaking through here and there adding a bit of mystery to the coming day. As the sun teased an appearance lighting the peak, whose name I’ve been told but can’t remember and it’s not on the map, I was drawn to it. When I looked at it in the viewfinder I saw the obstructions here and there and thought they were perfectly placed. It’s exactly how I was experiencing it and that’s what my heart said to capture. I’ve starred at the peak many a morning, none are the same with this morning being very special. Simply, I love the view!