Last week, we had a bunch of fun roaming around the urban jungle of New York City. This week, we’re heading to the opposite side of the country and landing in Washington. Specifically, we’re going to spend time exploring the Palouse region. Odds are, you’ve seen photos of the Palouse and its mind-bending array of rolling hills. There are certain times of year, just before the harvesting of the crops, when it is best to visit the area.
I was lucky enough to make it at a good time of year and I learned a lot about how something so seemingly simple could actually present a lot of challenges in terms of composition. As has been the case with all of these Photo Methodology episodes, I’m sharing the photos SOOC (straight out of camera), which means no editing of any kind. This is especially important because it’ll give you an idea of some of the challenges posed when trying to photograph a bunch of hills.
Because there is absolutely nothing covering these hills, they are completely at the mercy of the sun. This means that your best bet to photograph the area will be shortly before, during, and after sunrise and sunset. This is critical because at those times, sun will cast light at a very low angle, thus creating long shadows cast by these short hills, which aids in defining shape and depth. With the light shining just right, you’re left with precious little time to find strong compositions. Because this was my first visit here, I was more enchanted with simply gazing at these hills than anything else, something that is very atypical for me.
What your mind will begin to do is race, trying to find a pattern or some strong lines that will cut through the frame. Perhaps, it’ll be a segment of land that has a bunch of different color swatches laid out. Whatever the case, it is no small task to find order in this chaos… but it’s your responsibility. From the state park road, you have a swirling 360-degree view of the entire region and each side offers something unique. For me, this posed the greatest challenge. There were simply so many possibilities. It took me almost no time at all to realize that a wide angle lens would be useless here. Fortunately, I brought my super telephoto 70-400mm lens, which gave me enough throw to get very tight and isolate specific patterns.
Ultimately, the photo that caught my eye the most reminded me of a gigantic quilt sewn together by some giant. There were these patches of land that varied in color, texture, and shape. It’s as if someone took a bunch of different clays and squished them together and let them harden. It’s in this image that I’m reminded about how uncertain photography composition can be and that there is no one better to determine what makes a good composition than yourself. In terms of processing, the tool that had the greatest impact on the photo, as you can see, was Lightroom 6’s Dehaze slider. That helped cut out the haze and restore some of the original color of the land. The rest of the processing was pretty straight forward. I didn’t need to do much because the land itself was so full of style.
Brian Matiash is a Portland-based published photographer and author. He is a member of Sony’s Artisans of Imagery as well as the owner of Matiash, Inc. and the Matiash Shop.
To find out more about Brian’s work, click here. To get his new eBook, Stories from the Lens, for free, sign up to his newsletter.
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Filed under: Inspiration, Opinion, Photography, Technique & Tutorials Tagged: Brian Matiash, composition, inspiration, Landscape, method_bm, nature, Palouse, travel, Washington 
