Sometimes it's great fun to go down roads you've never been on, winding yourself further and further from your known area. Of course, a map helps in getting back to where you started. And for marking where you found some interesting sights.

      In this case I wanted to find a back road from Albion to Palouse, with both towns north of Pullman, home of Washington State University. I approached Albion on dirt roads I'd never traveled. That's when I came down a hill and spotted this lone tree cradled amongst the soft wheat hills.

      I tried a variety of orange and yellow filters along with no filter on this scene, which I found just outside Albion in Whitman County. I had been traveling along a dirt road amongst wheatfields when I spotted the tree. Placing my tripod a little more to the left and I would have shown too much of a tractor trail to the tree. A bit more to the right and you would not see the bottom of the tree. Moving forward or backwards would change the angle looking into the wheat field.

      As I've been doing lately, I scanned the 4x5 negative on my flatbed then manipulated it into the final image for the Internet. This way I get a jump start on seeing how my final picture might look as a print. I can also clean up dust and black spots, something that's difficult to do with the original negative or final silver gelatin print.