The Palouse that Was

Well then! We're back! It's been a while since I've posted any new pictures, for a variety of reasons including a move, two photo trips that went bust, and some car issues. But here we are! I visited Rose Creek Nature Preserve, in the Pullman/Colfax/Palouse area.

Very little of the Palouse has escaped agricultural or other development. A few pockets here and there - such as the Rose Creek pereserve - offer a window into the prior landscape. Rose Creek, along with places like Kamiak Butte, are also a good reminder that the Palouse is not all prairie, but has wetlands and forested habitats as well, particularly along waterways and on north-facing slopes.

For the first image, I wanted to set the aspen and other trees of the preserve against the Palouse's iconic rolling hills. The grassy foreground was a nice bonus. The evening light, filtered as it was through a few clouds, complemented the scene nicely. The WB came out a bit yellowish but that will be easy to fix in Lightroom. I'll also play around with using highlight recovery to make the grass a bit less harsh. F/22.

Next one comes from down the hill, closer to the creek itself. The Preserve is quite lush in places, showing all the hard work that the Nature Conservancy and the Palouse-Clearwater Environmental Institute have done to restore the environment. For this image, I used a quite narrow aperture of f/36 to get everything in focus. The upshot, of course, is that details get a bit fuzzy when the aperture is that high. I think the tradeoff was worth it for this image, though.

I'll definitely be back to the Rose Creek Nature Preserve. I imagine that the fall colors will be quite nice, and all the gone-to-seed wildflowers I saw suggested that visits in April and May will also be worthwhile.

Until next time...hopefully soon!