Loess is More
Its almost impossible not to love the stunning pastoral and abstract landscapes created by these seemingly endless rolling hills of loess with their late spring carpet of wheat, barley and other crops in various stages of growth and first harvest, viewed from Steptoe Butte, in the Palouse, Washington.
That this landscape looks a lot like an agricultural field of sand dunes is no mistake of the eye. When glaciers retreated from this part of the world thousands of years ago, the fine rich soil sediment left behind, known as loess (les or ˈlōˌes), was blown on the prevailing wind into these dune-like rolling hills, eventually becoming this beautiful and richly productive farming region further contoured and colored by human hands.
I think this is a great time for Sky Matthews and me to thank our wives for their support of our photography endeavors, which lately have seemed a bit like a mild addiction to say the least. I say this because, just a short while after getting the fortunate opportunity to do a quick shoot of Hawaii's still active volcanic landscapes, Sky and I were once again kindly granted leave to meet on the road to shoot the more ancient, but still very much volcanically-influenced landscapes of eastern Washington and northern Oregon. This is the first image from that outing, and though millions of shots of the Palouse have been taken from Steptoe Butte, there's something about the constant changing of the fields, and the varying light and shadow play with every passing moment, that make each shot I've ever seen seem at once both pleasingly familiar and wonderfully different.
Thanks for visiting!
Loess is More
Its almost impossible not to love the stunning pastoral and abstract landscapes created by these seemingly endless rolling hills of loess with their late spring carpet of wheat, barley and other crops in various stages of growth and first harvest, viewed from Steptoe Butte, in the Palouse, Washington.
That this landscape looks a lot like an agricultural field of sand dunes is no mistake of the eye. When glaciers retreated from this part of the world thousands of years ago, the fine rich soil sediment left behind, known as loess (les or ˈlōˌes), was blown on the prevailing wind into these dune-like rolling hills, eventually becoming this beautiful and richly productive farming region further contoured and colored by human hands.
I think this is a great time for Sky Matthews and me to thank our wives for their support of our photography endeavors, which lately have seemed a bit like a mild addiction to say the least. I say this because, just a short while after getting the fortunate opportunity to do a quick shoot of Hawaii's still active volcanic landscapes, Sky and I were once again kindly granted leave to meet on the road to shoot the more ancient, but still very much volcanically-influenced landscapes of eastern Washington and northern Oregon. This is the first image from that outing, and though millions of shots of the Palouse have been taken from Steptoe Butte, there's something about the constant changing of the fields, and the varying light and shadow play with every passing moment, that make each shot I've ever seen seem at once both pleasingly familiar and wonderfully different.
Thanks for visiting!