I use the long slow winter days to pour over archives to see if I found anything interesting. While going through thousands of photos I had shot in the Palouse region over the past few years, I found these four classic pastoral landscapes. Often, these would be of rusting shacks or vibrant red barns set against a lush farmland framed by a deep blue sky. It took a while to find these locations and find matching compositions, but these four worked.
Palouse
WA USA
The velvety greens of Palouse have me salivating for a trip to eastern Washington in summer. It is a landscape remarkably different from the urban scenes of Seattle, the lush forested landscape of the PNW or the snow-capped summits of the Cascades. And in the right light and location, Palouse really shines.
Steptoe Butte State Park
WA USA
While Palouse has its star attractions for a photography, what brings me the most delight is wandering around the backroads seeking photogenic barns that stand out against the blue skies and the rolling green hills. I was lucky with this one
Palouse
WA USA
The bus took it's own sweet time, winding through and around the forested mountain ranges in the eastern part of Honshu island. Through the wide windows, the life and landscape of rural Japan sped by: snow-capped peaks waiting for the summer sun with glacial blue waters heading down from them, terraced farms in every available piece of arable land in the valleys below, and bright green buds of the deciduous woodlands standing side by side with the evergreen conifers in the hills above. And in-between were tiny farmhouses with the vestiges of cherry blossoms, the perfect epitome of village life in Japan.
My destination was the village of Shirakawa-go, an old village in the Gifu Prefecture of Japan, that was so set back in time that it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site, partily due to the unique farmhouse style called the gassho-zukuri. And while the day, with gentle spring sun and mild temperatures, was perfect for visiting a place like this, it also drew in a thousand other tourists who all had the very same idea. I wandered through the village, transported back to a simpler era of feudal farming and sericulture. And were it not for the contrivances of modern civilization, I most certainly would have been. To be fair, that is the main draw of this picturesque village set amidst snow-capped peaks.
Here is a sampling of that beautiful timeless village, replete with cherry blossoms and modern selfie-stick carrying tourists...
Shirakawa-go
Gifu Prefecture, Japan
