Equipment

Obviously you’ll need at least one camera Body and maybe a backup body or even a good cell phone camera. You may need a range of lenses depending on your style. I shot the whole trip with a 28-300mm Tamron lens. This also minimized lens changing which is important with all of the dust blowing around. I also had a 17-40mm in case I needed something really wide (I didn’t). A really long lens like a 100-400mm or 150-600mm might be useful shooting from Steptoe Butte, but it was closed this spring when I was there.

This is a great place for B&W Infrared, so I carried a converted Canon M50 and 24-70mm equivalent lens. Carry lots of extra batteries and cards. Remember it’s remote and it could be a long drive back to the hotel.

TRIPOD!

Carry cleaning Equipment because you won’t believe the dust and you’ll drive lots of dirt and gravel roads. I bring sensor cleaning supplies since I feel confident doing that myself.

Bring state and local maps (I found a Colfax area map on Amazon) Palouse Photography maps and of course GPS.

The Role of Luck

The more I shoot travel and landscapes the more I find Luck plays a role. You may be in a location at the wrong time of day, the light is bad, the weather is working against you, there are crowds to contend with, and the list goes on and on.

Luck can be good or bad. When luck is with you be grateful and shoot until you know you have the shot. When your luck is bad try to have a plan B or C, and be prepared to move on when there is no good shot. One of my friends says his goal is always to make the best shot ever taken of a location. My more realistic goal is to take the best shot possible given the existing conditions.

Wind Farms

There are about 60 wind turbines in the Palouse near Oakesdale and companies are lobbying to build an additional 80-100 turbines in the area. They can definitely ruin a skyline shot and are not part of the natural beauty that draws photographers. You can usually work around them by moving to change your angle. If all else fails, they are usually fairly easy to remove in Photoshop.

Steptoe Butte

Many of the iconic Palouse images you see on the internet are shot from Steptoe Butte State Park. It provides high elevation and sweeping vistas. When I visited it was closed due to the road washing out. It is scheduled to reopen in the Fall of 2025.

Palouse Falls

As a break from barns and farms head over to Palouse Falls near LaCrosse WA. I like shooting waterfalls on overcast days, but bad luck kicked in and we got a bright sunny cloudless day. I didn’t anything great, so it will definitely be on the list for the next trip to the area.

What will you see?

This is farm country so obviously you’ll see barns and more barns. The barn designs are quite different from what we’re used to in Tennessee. In addition, there are old farmhouses and abandoned buildings, silos and grain elevators and farming machinery. The classic Palouse look is rolling hills planted in wheat or yellow canola flowers. You may even get lucky and see a crop duster plane or two.

I’m not a wildlife photographer, but while I was there I saw hawks, rabbits, coyotes and pups, pheasants and mule deer. I saw moose crossing signs, but no moose. In warm weather watch for snakes, especially the Northern Pacific Rattlesnake, the only venomous snake in the region.

After seeing over 100 barns in 6 days they all began to run together. I tried to save GPS info when I remembered but my camera kept turning GPS off. It would be good to save good locations into your GPS for future trips.

Amazingly, I shot less than 2000 images in six days. This is not due to lack of subjects, but due to lots of driving between locations. After my first pass of editing everything looked plain and too ”documentary”, so I added lots of effects, glows, textures, and varied cropping to get something that felt more unique and personal. I would encourage you to work on editing your images to develop your own style and vision.

Go to filter/Other/minimum and in the dialog box select 2 PX and preserve squareness.

Change the blend mode of this layer to color dodge

At this point we have a basic black and white pencil sketch. Double clicking on the word “minimum” opens up the minimum filter and we can change the value. I find something between 1 and five usually works, but go ahead and experiment. Here I have used 1, 2, 4, and 6 to show how the image changes. If you like the Black and white sketch go to layers/flatten image and save it.

I usually like to take it a step further and add some color back into the image. To do this I first add a levels adjustment layer. Go to layer/adjustment layer/levels.

Moving the shadow, midtone and highlight cursors will change the brightness of the image and controls how the color layer we add next will look.

Go back to the background layer and use CTRL J (CMD J) to duplicate it. Drag this layer to the top of the layers and change the blend mode to color.

Adjust the levels sliders and the opacity of the color layer until you like the look. Go to layers/flatten image and save your image with a new name. If you think you will use this effect often, you might record all of these steps as an action, so you can do all of these steps with a single click. Actions can be tricky and can be well beyond basic, but do a Google search to learn how.

While I use this effect often on portraits, it works on other types of images as well.

Make sure you have a good camera strap and be sure it is firmly attached. You may wind up knee deep in the surf, so wear shorts and shoes that you don’t mind getting wet. I use a waterproof pouch for my phone, key fob and wallet. Keep a microfiber cloth handy for condensation or in case your lens gets splashed. A large floppy hat protects your face and ears, but also decreases glare in the viewfinder. It’s best if you don’t change lenses because there is always sand blowing around at the beach. This is one place I absolutely use my 28-300 all in one lens. You could use a 70-200, but you won’t get the big colorful sky. A 24-105 would work, but you won’t get the dramatic frame filling shots.

To me the shoots have four distinct parts and require different settings and techniques. For the first twenty minutes or so the horses and riders come by one at a time and move pretty slowly. This is the time to get great color in the sky, and also a good time for slow shutter speed and panning. If you aren’t experienced with panning, take some time to practice at shutter speeds of 1/8 to 1/30 sec before going to your first shoot. Not every panning shot will be good, but when everything works just right they can be great. For the first couple of years I concentrated on good color in the sky, and let the horse and rider become silhouettes. Modern sensors and software make it possible to bring out detail in the riders while keeping deep color in the sky.

As the light increases, the horses will begin to pick up the pace and start to gallop. Experienced horse photographers will tell you the money shot for horses is to have all four hooves in the air. This won’t happen until they are at a gallop or faster. At this point you have the option of panning with a slow shutter speed or trying to freeze motion with a higher shutter speed and higher ISO. This might be a good time to try Auto ISO. To get all four hooves in the air, shoot at least 8 to 10 frames/sec and delete the rejects. Usually you’ll find that one shot in each burst or two. Also your success rate improves with experience.

Most of the group leaders will try to do a shot of all of the horses and riders in the water in front of the rising sun. Contrast is very high and gets worse by the minute as the sun rises.

Usually the riders will take a break after the group shot to let the horses cool down. This is the time to get some portraits of horses and riders. The light is a bit harsh for good portraits, but if you pay attention to the light and have the riders move for the best light you’ll get some good shots.

After the cool down/portrait time it’s time for some high speed passes with the horses coming at you. This is the time for high shutter speeds and high frame rates. The light is harsh, so you may have to work a bit in post.

If four hooves in the air is good, eight is even better.

Always keep your eyes open and be aware of what’s going on around you. This is important for safety, but also there are those unexpected actions that happen in a split second. With luck you may be in just the right place at the right time.

Once you shoot horses on the beach, I think you’ll be as hooked as I am. There may be other places to shoot horses on the beach, so keep an eye out for events on your travels.

In Shutter priority, as light decreases the camera will select wider apertures until it reaches the lens’ widest aperture and then begin increasing ISO. There is no adjustment you need to make other than setting high and low ISO. In Shutter priority you can still dial in exposure compensation as you normally would.

When I use Auto ISO, I almost always use manual mode, so that I have the most control. I set shutter speed, aperture and the camera adjusts ISO using the minimum and maximum I have set. The biggest draw back on most of my cameras is using exposure compensation. Normally in manual we add over or under exposure by watching our meter in the view finder. But in Auto ISO the camera always adjusts for a “normal exposure”. If you want to increase or decrease exposure you have to go to the camera’s menu and select exposure comp/AEB and dial it in there. That can be pretty slow when things are happening quickly. On my R5 there is a third control wheel and I can adjust compensation quickly while looking through the viewfinder.

Here are a couple of shoots where I feel Auto ISO really helped me get consistently good shots. Back in 2018 I went to the Photographer’s weekend at the Durango Silverton Railroad. For two days the train would go to scenic locations, let the photographers off and back the train up and make a pass or sometimes two. I knew the light would be constantly changing, but that I wanted 1/250 to freeze the motion of the train and f/8 for adequate depth of field. For two days and over 1000 images I had very consistent images that required minimal processing. ISO ranged from 200 to 6400.

I shot my second rodeo in 2022 in Dunlap, and knew I’d be dealing with very fast action and pretty low light. I set my shutter at 1/1000 for motion and my lens’ widest aperture of f/2.8 and Auto ISO. ISO varied from 100 when there was still daylight to 16,000 when there was only LED lighting. I was shooting an older 7D Mark II and there was very obvious noise, but with Topaz DeNoise I was able to get very nice images.

This spring (2025) I went to the Okefenokee Swamp and took two sunset boat excursions. I was in a moving boat and often had to shoot between other passengers, so I had less than a second to compose and shoot. I was using my 28-300mm Tamron lens, so I set 1/320 sec and f/8 with Auto ISO. For the boat excursions ISO was between 100 and 4000. However, while I was waiting for the boat I shot a rack of life preservers in very heavy shade and wound up at an ISO of 51,200. The original was very noisy and flat, but after two minutes of editing and noise removal it was a very nice image.

In short, I don’t need to use Auto ISO all of the time, but there are those times when it is invaluable. Give it a test run so that you understand how to set it up, how it works and its limitations. Then when you have one of those difficult situations you’ll be prepared.

I worked on a couple of new layers so I could use masking and opacity. The spatter brushes create random patterns and sizes so you may have to try several times to get a look you like.

And here is the final image with her freckles added in.

Lip Gloss – Most models seem to be constantly applying and re-applying lip gloss, but sometimes they forget or it dries out. The lips in this image are okay, but they lack the shine of lip gloss.

Here is my set of lip gloss for top lips. There is a separate set for lower lips. I always put these on a separate layer because even with brush sizing they almost always have to be adjusted with free transform to fit the lips just right. Always paint with white since these are highlights, and adjust the opacity until it looks right.

And here is the after with top and bottom lip gloss added.

Eyelashes – Some people just have small fine eye lashes and all the mascara at the cosmetics counter won’t fix it.

I have several sets of eye lash brushes, and they come in upper and lower lashes and right and left. Each eyelash goes on its own layer and it usually takes a lot of free transform to warp the eye lash to the eye. Once I’ve done the top lash on one eye, I’ll copy that layer, flip the lash with transform, move and warp it to fit the other eye. After getting everything positioned I can dial down the opacity a bit to blend them in.

And here is the final image with eye lashes added. I might have chosen some more subtle eye lashes, but where’s the fun in that? Besides, I wanted the eyelashes to be so obvious you couldn’t possibly miss them.

Perhaps the biggest downside to using brushes is that no one believes you when you actually don’t add items to your image. This flock of pelicans flew by at just the right time and place, but everyone assumes I put them there.

Bats – Maybe sometimes plain old birds just don’t send the right message and you need Bats. To me they were perfect for this Halloween image. Here I put the bats on their own layer and merged the image when everything looked right.

Stars – I often use various star brushes to emphasize lights. It’s the digital answer to the star filters we used in the 70’s and 80’s. Here’s the Pemaquid Lighthouse in early evening before the light was activated.

I’ll turn the light on in a couple of steps. First I duplicated the layer, set it to screen mode and added a black mask. I painted just the inside of the light in white on the mask and that lightened the light. I repeated this layer until it looked bright enough.

Then I selected a four-point star brush, resized it, and painted in white on a new layer. This allows me to tone down the effect by decreasing the opacity if I need to.

And here is the final effect.

Here is another example using the same steps. Again this is the Pemaquid Lighthouse at sunrise, and I had been helping a friend time the lighthouse pattern to get the light in his shot. But I managed to time it wrong in my shot.

Here I’ve lightened the inside of the light using the technique above.

And here I’ve added the star effect.

Water Drops– I shot this image for an earlier article on splash photography, used some water drop filters around the base of the glass for extra interest.

Fog – If you’ve ever worked with a fog machine in the studio, you know it has to be the last shot of the day, because once you’ve done a few blasts of fog, it takes forever to clear. And the fog is unpredictable, often blocking your subject, or not filling the areas you want. Here is a shot that thought would look good with fog, but my fog machine was broken. So I thought I’d try adding the fog later.

As you can see, I used several fog brushes on several different layers. This allows me mask the fog to make some fog appear to be in front of the model, and some behind the model. I can also change the opacity of each layer and blur each layer to get the effect I like.

And you can add fog to your scenic shots as well. This Smoky Mountains Cascade was shot in a light rain, and all that was missing was some fog.

Here I’ve opened a panel with a group of fog brushes.

Here I’ve added just a subtle touch of fog above the falls. And again it’s on a separate layer so I can control opacity and blur.

Here I’ve gone wild with several layers of fog. Which one is right or better totally depends on your taste as an artist. But with the fog brushes you are in control.

Light Rays – There are numerous light ray brush sets available. Here are a couple of before and after shots. As usual the light rays are on separate layers so I can control the opacity and blending mode.

While I chose food as a convenient subject, you can choose whatever interests you. I could easily envision series based on old cameras, tools, flowers, musical instruments, sewing equipment, shoes, hats, medical equipment, and limitless other possibilities.

Here are a few of the images I shot. You will notice sometimes one image will have different textures in different edits. Trying different textures and processing was a major part of my plan for this series.

LANDSCAPES Textures can add a mood to landscapes. They can help disguise flaws, or, as below, add some interest to a bare sky.

STILL LIFE and PRODUCTS In magazines and ads you usually see products shot on a solid white or color background. That is to draw your eye to the subject and allow space to add type. But when is the last time you saw an old master’s still life painting with a white background? Below is an example of using a more recognizable image rather than a pattern as a texture. It may be blurring the distinction between composites and what most people think of as textures.

COMPOSITING It’s often difficult to composite a subject into a different background. There are usually problems with color, lighting and overall feel or mood. Using a texture can help pull the elements together. In a composite I mask the subject, but usually only about 80% and I often decrease the mask opacity all around the subject’s outline to blend the two together more smoothly. Here I used a grungy texture that fit the mood of the scene, and left some texture on my subject.

In this example I added a texture, and then also added the blue color grading using a color lookup table adjustment layer for the spooky night effect.

Here are a couple of more detailed examples. This is my starting image. It has already been edited, but no texture has been applied.

This is my favorite texture for portraits. It has 4 or 5 (a slight variation) layers with different blending modes. I have it saved as a Photoshop file with layers, so I can open it, select all of the layers and copy and paste them to my new image.

Here is my 5 layer version added. The next thing I do is select the textures layers and create a new group from layers. That lets me mask or change the opacity of the whole group rather than each individual layer.

Here I masked the texture from the subject at about 80%, and then added an adjustment layer to brighten the image as the textures darkened it too much.

And here is the final image with textures and levels adjustment.

Here is an example of using textures on a black background. This is the original image, and again all of the basic editing has already been done.

Here I’ve added two textures, and since these are going over black, I used the Lighten blending mode. I created a mask by going to the base layer, selecting the selection brush and using “select subject”. With the subject selection active I clicked on the first texture layer and held down “Alt” while clicking the mask icon, creating a perfect mask around the subject. I copied that mask to the next texture layer. I also used Infinite Color to create a color grading, and copied the mask to the infinite color group and decreased the opacity of the mask to let some color to show on the model. And in the final image I applied a Gaussian blur to the two textures layers so they were less intense and didn’t compete with the model.

Where do I find textures?

Shoot your own. Look for patterns, light or even subjects you like. Search for “Free photography Textures download”. I like concrete, cement, stucco, adobe (mud walls) and wood textures and I shoot whenever I see good examples.

Which texture should I use?

Try several, alone or in combination. There is no right or wrong here as long as it suits your vision.

Which blend mode should I use?

Try lighten, screen, darken, multiply, overlay and soft light.

How do I know when to stop?

Don’t ask me. I’m not known for my restraint. Maybe when it looks “Overdone” back off a layer or two, and/or try decreasing the opacity.

I added textures and now my picture is too dark.

Try decreasing the opacity, mask key areas, and/or add a levels adjustment layer.

I have hundreds of textures. With just one image, this could be endless.

Absolutely. But now you never run out of things to try. I have about 1000 textures, so that’s 1000 possible variations, not counting blending modes and opacity. If I use two textures, that becomes a million possibilities. Add three textures and it becomes a billion possibilities. Even at just a million possibilities, you could spend the rest of your life working on just one image.

I’ve added a texture I like, now what?

Try another texture layer. Try color grading in LR, or using look up tables in PS.