Have I ever mentioned how much I like the Palouse? Every year I head out there with my list of locations to visit and every year I find something new.
And every year is different. Some years we have great clouds, other years we have no clouds. Some years we find canola, other years we don’t. Some years it rains, and other years it’s nearly 90 degrees the entire time.
This year, the weather forecast called for clear skies and high temperatures for the entire time. Thankfully, the forecast is nearly always wrong and while it was hot, we actually got some pretty good, sometimes crazy, clouds. When we started the workshop this year, the canola hadn’t yet bloomed and by the end of the week we photographed a couple of fields of it. You just never know what’s going to be around until you get there.
But the thing you can count on is great landscape and other photo opportunities. This year was no different; I found a couple of nice, intimate Palouse landscapes that I’d not seen before and made new discoveries at Dave’s Truck Rescue in Sprague. Well, not really new, it’s just that every time you go there, you find something you’d not noticed before.
At one location, we missed most of the right light because clouds were covering the sun. But there were fleeting moments where we had about 15 seconds of frantic shooting before going back into wait and see mode. We ended up returning to the same location a couple of days later but I ended up liking the images from the previous shoot better and was glad we waited it out for those fleeting moments.
Like last year, we tried some night photography. The moon was nearly full, so Milky Way shooting was out, so we faced our cameras away from the moon and captured some moonlit Palouse landscapes. With stars!
The above slideshow has some of my favorite images from the workshop as well as a few from my pre-workshop scouting.
On my way to Colfax, I camped at Palouse Falls State Park so that I could finally, at long last, attempt a sunset shot and a Milky Way shot. Both turned out ok, but I think it can get better. It was a good beginning.
Next year I’ll be doing this workshop with Cliff Zenor. Dates have not yet been set, but it will be in June. I’m still waiting to hear from the hotel what dates I’ve been allotted. Be sure to let me know if you want to go. You can find more information on my Palouse workshop page.
Looks like you had another great workshop. I’ll always remember our trips.
Rod I am thinking strongly about joining you next year here. I do not use Lightroom will that be a problem????
Not a problem at all. We mainly concentrate on the photography itself. I use Lightroom in classroom sessions mainly for critiques: displaying images and demoing editing options using Lightroom. Anything we do in Lightroom can probably be done in whatever image editing program you’re using.