I thought this would be a good representative of “Small Town USA”. Traffic was light so I was able to stand in the middle of the road to line up my shot without getting run over. I used the “pencil sketch application”, that is built right into my Nikon D-600, to get this effect.

I decided to do this photograph in black and white, because it was the textures and patterns of the tall grass and weathered boards and roof shingles that was my main focus. Doing it in a monochrome accentuates all that. . . Also it was an overcast day, so the sky was just a dull gray. I think this was located somewhere in Oklahoma.

The Palouse is an agricultural region, mostly located in Southeastern Washington, with a little of it spreading beyond the state lines into Idaho and Oregon. From Steptoe Butte you get wonderful vistas in all directions of the rolling hills covered with fields of wheat. I would love to go there sometime when the fields are all green, but I am usually passing through there in October. It is a rather dreary photo, because there was a lot of smoke in the air, and the sky was overcast. Some of the harvested fields were being burned, but also it was a year of bad forest fires out west.