348 - Palouse Falls
*Note: This adventure also features an in-field vlog.
Alright y’all, I’m probably going to keep this blog post short because I’ve been editing like a mofo all day now. WITH THAT BEING SAID… This place, Palouse Falls, sufficiently blew my mind.
At first, I didn’t expect much. We honestly only came to this place because it was the only thing off Highway 90 besides Steptoe Butte that seemed interesting.
The thing about Palouse Falls is that it’s so unexpected. You’re literally driving along the flat, hilly grasslands of Washington for hours, then all of sudden there’s a massive hole in the ground with a waterfall. It almost seems like it was placed here accidently, or was created to be a dam or something. But it wasn’t- it’s a natural byproduct of the Ice Age.
Before I get going on the photography, I’m going to preface this by saying there wasn’t a goddamn cloud in the sky, and there’s really only one interesting feature to this place. So I KNEW going in that I was probably going to be doing a Sky Replacement. If that pisses you off, go eat a cactus.
We arrived about two hours early, and spent the first hour eating so much spaghetti that we could barely walk. Luckily the park doesn’t require much hiking at all, as the whole place is basically an overlook to the waterfall.
However, my adrenaline started pumping once I saw a few of the signs. Or should I say, all of the signs. There were dozens of them. And they all warned about the dangerous cliffs. Heights are my worst fear if you didn’t know.
Eventually we manage to meander over to the “famous” composition, and I take one look at it and nope out. The shot requires one to stand at the *very* edge of the cliff, where it’s extremely windy. I take a few pussy ass test shots, and realize I’m not gonna get the shot I want unless I fully commit.
So I back out and decide to fly my drone a bit, to see if there’s any other angles I can hit that don’t require such risky behavior. Overall, I got a TON of solid video (check out the vlog if you haven’t,) but not a single good landscape photo.
Upon reviewing the footage, I realize I’m either going home with nothing or facing my fear head on. I walk over to the edge, and decide to just send it. The twilight lighting is incredible because the sun finally set, and my lens (Tamron 17-28mm 2.8) is just wide enough to fit it all in. It’s meant to be...
I step forward and lean back as far as I could, with my tripod basically hanging over the edge to ensure I didn’t get the ledge in the foreground. I snag three shots to focus stack, a couple backups, and call it a day.
Here’s the image, in all it’s sky replacement glory:
“Engorged”
Sony a7rIII + Tamron 17-28mm 2.8
[ISO 1250 ~ 17mm ~ f/9 ~ 1/100s {x3} + Sky Replacement]
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
I ended up having to increase the canvas size in Photoshop to fit the entire sky (which was taken from a different shoot I had a couple years ago). Luckily enough, this sky fit the scene perfectly. It almost appears as if the river is a leading line to the cloud.
That was pretty much it for this shoot. I tried a few other experimental shots of the waterfall that didn’t include the sky, but nothing could quite capture the scale of this place the same way.
Wow. That was actually a pretty packed blog post. Sometimes I just need to get into the writing flow and it all just spills out. Cool. Alright. Bye.
I’m on a mission to explore as much as humanely possible.
Want to see my progress? Check out the Adventure Map.
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