Heading East

The Cascade Mountains, and the Columbia River Gorge cutting through them, create two very different ecosystems to their east and west.  Photos from the last three days were all taken within several hours of each other, and show the transition of both terrain and weather as you pass from Western Washington through the Columbia River Gorge and into Eastern Washington.  This is what most of the eastern part of the state looks like, rolling hills, grasslands and farm fields.

We had a six hour drive to our destination of Pullman, Washington which is in the southeast corner of Washington along the Idaho border, so I didn't have a lot of time to stop and take photos.  But these clouds and fields kept mocking me until I couldn't take it any more.  I pulled over along the side of a desolate exit ramp and took this photo, which gave me a little elevation over the scene.  I ended up liking it a lot better than I thought I would, I think because it seems to have a lot of depth to it.

In terms of photography, I have a choice between two lenses, my 17-55mm (wide angle lens) and my 80-200mm (zoom lens).  I almost always choose the zoom lens because it lets me focus in on an interesting pattern or shape, and I like to abstract a scene that way.  I'm much less comfortable with my wide angle lens.  I know I'm supposed to have foreground, middle ground and background, and I really struggle with capturing all that; somehow it's just too much to put together for me.  This photo is lacking foreground.  I can't remember what was along the side of the road that I could have used as foreground, but I remember thinking that it wouldn't work.  So I left it out completely, which should make the scene seem much flatter, but the clouds and field rows do give it a lot of depth, so it came out a lot more interesting than I was expecting.