Here’s a shot of Palouse Falls, at sunset, from my vacation out to Washington State in May this year. There was about 50 photographers perched on the cliffs above the 200 foot falls taking photos during sunset. The place is becoming one of those internationally recognized locations for photography, as well as Steptoe Butte in the Palouse region so that shouldn’t be too surprising that so many people would be there. I would come back later in my trip to take Milky Way shots and there was still 10-15 photographers there for that even though a park ranger had come before dark and told a few to leave.

Location

Palouse Falls State Park is located in Washington State about 4 hours from both Seattle & Portland. I was staying in Pullman, WA which was 1.5 hours from the park and 45 minutes from Steptoe Butte State Park. On the way to falls you’ll drive through the green fields of the Palouse and eventually enter the Scablands of Washington which looks more like a desert. Eventually you’ll come to a gravel road and travel on that for about 15 minutes and finally reach Palouse Falls State Park. They are in the middle of nowhere so be careful as it would take a rescue crew a long time to reach you. In fact, someone died on my last day of  vacation when they fell off the 200 foot cliff. Fortunately I wasn’t there to see that.

Once there, there are plenty of easy trails to get a good view of the falls. I didn’t attempt it, but there’s also a trail that takes you to the base of the falls which winds down the side of the cliff. I only saw a few people on this trail. I was avoiding it as I had heard there are a fair amount of Rattlesnakes at the park and I didn’t want to encounter one on a less traveled trail. The view of the falls seemed to be best from up top on the cliffs anyway.

There’s also plenty of room so you won’t be elbow to elbow like at some other famous places such as Mesa Arch in Canyonlands National Park. I actually spent most of sunset at the smaller upper falls and was pretty much the only person there which was awesome. Once the sun got too low I quickly ran to the lower falls to catch this scene. I then worked my way around the rim getting different shots from different angles. I think this particular angle is the best and most recognized of the falls.

Composition

The sun was quickly fading as I spent most of sunset at the upper falls. My plan was to get the best compositions first and then work my way around the rim of the falls trying out other compositions. The interesting thing about sunset at the falls is the sun is mostly behind you so the only color you’ll get from the clouds is from the sun on the other side of the sky. If there are no clouds in the sky, it’s going to be pretty boring. Fortunately when I was there, I found that there were some clouds which the sun could reflect from which was awesome considering it was overcast earlier in the day when I was at the falls.

Using my 16-35mm lens, I zoomed out to 16mm and fired of some bracketed shots of the falls. I also used my Formatt-Hitech 6 stop ND filter to get a smooth effect of the water. I like how the water swirled below the falls as well. Before visiting the falls, I was a bit worried that 16mm wouldn’t be wide enough to capture both the falls and the gorge at the same time, but was I able to just fit them all into the scene at the same time. If you’re visiting and have a wider lens, you might want to consider shooting a panorama.

Post Processing

Like a lot of the pictures I take, I’m a bit late on processing this one 4 months later. I skip around a lot in my collection of images to process. Sometimes I get sick of processing one trip so I go to another. Or I’ll get tired of sunsets so I process a Milky Way shot. Last year, I was a full season behind most other phographers in the area which can be good and bad. When others are posting timely images of the eclipse or sunflower fields, I’m posting things from spring so my images aren’t the same as everyone else.

Having recently purchased several post-processing videos by Ted Gore & Jimmy McIntyre I decided to try to process this one differently. Usually I use Photomatix and Lightroom to do my processing. This time I started with using Raya Pro in Photoshop. I then converted the blended images to a smart object and made all my edits in Camera Raw. After that I applied an Orton effect to the scene and did a high pass sharpening layer. Once I liked that, out of habit, I ported all my Camera Raw changes back to Lightroom since the too are essentially the same. Then, I made a series of other edits in Lightroom. I could have just done everything in Lightroom to begin with, but I wanted to play around more in Photoshop first.

This time I around I tried to avoid using too much contrast. In fact, I actually increased the blacks slider which is rare for me. Something I learned from the Jimmy McIntyre video again. I also used a new processing style called Split Toning. I set it to a red color and then increased the saturation 7% for the highlights and 2% for the shadows. This was something I learned from a video by Ole Henrik Skjelstad of 500px. This gave the photo more of a pleasing red hue which is common during sunset.

Finally I sent the Lightroom file back to Photoshop and added an Orton effect from the Raya Pro panel and only applied it to some of the areas of the photo. I also added a high pass filter to give other areas more sharpening.

Software Used

Lightroom

Photoshop

Raya Pro

Techniques Used

High-Dynamic-Range

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