P#21: A Day at Palouse Becomes an Incredible Work of Art

The Beauty of Palouse

Bryan Peterson: This photograph was taken from eastern Washington state up in the Palouse. Many, many people have since gone to the Palouse.

I discovered it a long time ago as a number of photographers had then. Nowadays, because of the Internet, it's high on the list of so many people's places to go out to. Every spring and summer people go out there and photograph the beautiful undulating, rolling hills of wheat fields. (Click the image for a larger version)

That particular location, I was up at a place called Steptoe Butte. I was shooting with my Nikkor 400mm lens in the late afternoon light and just happened to get there at the right place at the right time and got this photograph that shows the grain elevator right smack dab in the middle of the frame amongst the undulating rows and hills of the green wheat.

Again, it's fair to say that we have now got a composition, if we break it down, that is all about the elements of design -- line being once again the dominant force here and, in this case, a curvilinear line.

Audri Lanford: This one looks surreal. How did you make it look so surreal?

Bryan Peterson: I didn't make it look anything. I did nothing, literally. That was taken back in the days of film. It was taken on Kodachrome. It's simply a time of day thing. I know I haven't talked about this nearly enough in this interview because it's not the emphasis, but this photograph of Palouse is another example of the critical role that light plays.

Shedding Light on Light

I want to stress that I'm an absolute 100% believer in light, yet I also want to stress that I am not going to be one of these photographers that make me cringe when they talk about light being the absolute essence of every photograph, and without light you've got nothing.

I can assure you there is no light in that photograph of the red car going through the intersection. There is no light in that shot of the cat. Both of those photographs were taken in horribly inclement weather -- the cat on a very cloudy, and of course the intersection with the car on a snowy day.

It's fair to say that you can take photographs that can be quite compelling without light, but if I can also say this then I will have made my point. I want people to think of the creation of a photograph in much the same way as a wedding cake. By that I mean simply this...

You can't have a cake without the different layers of the cake. If light is going to have a role in that, it won't have any role in that cake until the end and that end meaning the frosting. You can still photograph without light and make a cake without frosting, but it looks and tastes better if you put frosting on it.

My point is that that image owes it success in part to light, but it's also successful because of the use of lines and the composition that does nothing but focus on that line. It's a tight composition.

Again, in this case, a 400mm lens, which is also compressed to space and subsequently you can argue that it is also, at least in the green area of that photograph, a photograph of pattern -- undulating rows of wheat.

So that's my feeling about light. Light is the frosting on the cake but it's never the cake.

To Sum Up

We've heard so often that lighting is everything when it comes to taking a photograph. It might be odd to hear that lighting is nothing more than frosting on the cake in some situations. It did, however, provide for an absolutely stunning shot in Bryan Peterson's photograph of Palouse.