Well it was another great time in the Palouse. This year's Palouse photo workshop saw a TON of canola. Usually I scout around for it and then we photograph the few fields we can find. This year, we had our pick and drove past several fields just because there was so much to choose from.
We also visited a new location (for me) this year: Dave’s Old Truck Rescue in Sprague. This is a great location with lots of trucks and lots of room to roam. If you’re a fan of abstract colors and shapes, you’d love getting close to these trucks. If you’re a fan of old trucks, you’ll be in heaven.
I’ve just about given up relying of weather forecasts for the Palouse. When it told us we’d have clouds, it was clear. When it told us it would be mostly sunny, we had complete overcast. This makes a mess of planning, but one thing I've learned about a Palouse photo workshop is that you play the hand you’re dealt and you do the best you can. If nothing else, you can use the opportunity of crappy light to plan future shots.
For example, this is a shot I’ve been wanting to try for awhile and the weather forecast showed that it would only be partly cloudy (or mostly sunny, I don’t recall, l and I really don’t know the difference) and this should have been an excellent late afternoon shot, after which we’d head up Steptoe Butte for the actual sunset. Instead, you see what we had.
But we found some other things to photograph and, more importantly, planned for a future sunrise shot at this location. And as a bonus, we got to go to sleep earlier because of all the overcast.
Here’s the plan: get here before sunrise. From this location in mid to late June, the sun will peak over the horizon just about where I’ve added the arrow. This could be a great opportunity for a sunburst coming over the horizon shot.
Wait just a couple minutes more and the tree will be backlit. Then move to the right and do more sunbursts among the tree branches. Then head up to Steptoe Butte for the aerial view of the light on the land.
This could also be a good spot in the autumn. I’m not sure what this tree will do in the autumn, whether it will turn colors or not, but it’s sure worth a look. In the fall, the sun will be coming up to the right of Steptoe Butte.
So, while the light was dull that evening, the possibilities we envisioned are pretty bright.
We visited Steptoe Butte a couple of times and both of those produced some great images.
If you’re photographing the actual sunrise, you’ll often have a very bright sky paired with a landscape still in shadow. And even with today’s digital cameras with there wide dynamic range, the range of light in the scene is still too great for the camera to capture in just one shot.
So you’ve got a few options. You can use a graduated neutral density filter, you can take two shots, one exposed for the sky and one for the ground and manually blend them in Photoshop, or you can take a series of shots at different exposures for processing in an HDR program.
In my experience, in situations like this I get more natural results by using a graduated neutral density filter or by taking two shots and blending them. I chose the latter for this image.
Doing some night photography in the Palouse has long been a goal, but it’s hard to pull off because you need to skip the following sunrise otherwise everyone will keel over from sleep deprivation. But this year we managed to pull it off.
The moon wasn’t in the best phase for this shoot. Ideally, we would have had maybe a quarter moon or less to light up the landscape but not put too much light in the sky as to drown out the Milky Way. This night, the moon was at about 80% and wasn’t setting until about 2:30 a.m. But we went anyway and I’m really glad we did.
Moonlight on the landscape is awesome. And the stars looked decent, though the Milky Way wasn’t as bright as I’d hoped for. But by about 1:30 a.m. or so, with the moon starting to set, the sky got a little darker and the stars started popping. And everyone got some really nice images. Since this was a first for some of the group, it was also a great learning experience. I’ll be sure to try this again next year and I’m already planning, using my memory and the Photographer’s Ephemeris app. In fact, I’ve got what I think could be a pretty sweet shot in mind.
Interested in a Palouse photo workshop or tour? Check out my Workshops site or send me an email.
