Roadtrip Images

Palouse Falls is an unexpected waterfall in the middle of a very productive farming region.

Palouse Falls State Park is in southeastern Washington State and the Falls are on the Palouse River. At 198 feet, it’s a unique falls in that the surrounding area is one of the most productive wheat growing areas in the Country. You wouldn’t expect falls of this magnitude to be in a place like this. The resulting canyon cut by the falls and the Palouse river are very picturesque. The canyon walls are a shear vertical drop and about 370 feet deep.

As with many State and National parks, there are the official viewing areas and then those made by people seeking a better angle. That’s the case here. The official, and fenced, viewing areas for Palouse Falls are from a more head on perspective. It’s a nice enough angle but it misses a significant feature of the location that being the canyon. On our first night there we photographed from the official viewpoint and you can see that below. It was shot in late evening light.

We noticed that there was another area that had more of a side view of the falls and it was beyond the fenced areas with warning signs all over the place. These signs were no doubt the result of some recent cases of people getting too close to the edge and falling in. We decided to check this area out the next day.

On evening two we ventured over to the new vantage point and were met with some other photographers with the same idea. Shortly after we picked our spot a photo workshop arrived so the area got pretty busy. This angle allowed a nice view of the falls while also providing a wonderful angle of the canyon downstream. This canyon is gorgeous in it’s own right but combining it with the falls gave it that extra punch that makes this such a compelling composition. You can see the canyon in the second image below. The featured image above is from this new vantage point.

To get the entire scene in takes a very wide angle lens. 16mm for the featured image at the top (10mm on a crop sensor camera). I originally thought a panorama would be necessary so I made a number of those but they really weren’t the best solution for this image. The featured image is a single exposure.

The sky had a few clouds but not a lot so I only included a small portion of it. I was mostly interested in the rich greens and browns of the canyon walls along with the falls itself. The late evening light really accentuated these colors and I knew with a little processing they would really come alive. The few clouds in the sky were catching some nice color so including those was a bonus. The composition was really just a balancing act of how much of the falls and canyon can you get in at 16mm.

I wanted to include a little of the edge we were standing on to give the image some depth and perspective plus it had some nice color itself. I made sure it didn’t cut off the bottom of the waterfall basin which required getting kinda close to the edge but nothing risky. If you have a fear of heights this is not the shot for you.

The view down canyon was superb with this late evening light. The scene really came together from this perspective. I’m glad we decided to come back for a second night.

As we were slowly making our way to the Canadian Rockies from the Oregon Coast, the Palouse Falls were more or less on the way. I’ve seen images online of these falls and I felt it was worth the stop. It definitely was. They are very picturesque in the right light (evening) and the park is not very busy. At least not when we went at the end of April/1st of May. The waterfall flow was good and strong but not muddy. I came away with an image I’m happy with and that makes it a successful shoot!

The featured image is available as a free wallpaper download. See the Shop page for more info.

Nikon D850 with Nikkor 16-35mm at 16mm. f/11 at 0.5 seconds. ISO 64 for featured image at top