Bale-scape

From time to time, our everyday views here on the Palouse turn surreal. For a few days in August, our normal drive to town got extra geometric as these straw bales waited to be picked up. The warm, soft light came courtesy of the wildfire smoke that now defines most Western summer days. You see views like this around the Palouse and think that you couldn’t possibly go wrong with a camera, but in my experience the view through the lens is almost invariably more difficult to compose than I hope. My initial vision here was to go as abstract as possible, but I ended up preferring this take with a little context, some juxtaposition between the industrial lines of agriculture and the wild ditch plants still making a go of it in the midst of human modification.