Steptoe Butte Adventure Session on the Palouse, Washington

A little backstory to start this one off…

Kelsey and I grew up across the street from each other our entire lives until we turned 18 and left for college. We grew up in Colfax, a tiny town of 2900 people, so everyone knew everyone. We were always in the same friend group and hung out from time to time, I remember always getting stoked to be invited over because she had a hot tub and we would watch scary movies. We didn’t really bond closely until a few years after college, I had just moved to Boise with James and she was going to college at NNU in Nampa. She called me one morning out of the blue because she needed a ride and didn’t have her car, and the rest was history. We spent so many late nights catching up and making new, fun, hilariously ridiculous memories. We were there for each other through a classmates death not long after I had moved to Boise and roadtripped home together to be with our friends during that tough time. The amount of time we have spent having deep conversations and really getting to know one another on a whole new level. Now we’ve seen each other through dating, engagements, marriages, buying homes and babies. It’s so fun to do life with her and when she decided to move back to Colfax with her husband Ryan I was beyond excited. I quickly decided to steal them and do a fun adventurous shoot with them at Steptoe Butte outside of Colfax.

Now let me tell you, Steptoe Butte isn’t much. Not compared to large mountain peaks or huge canyons. But it certainly has it’s own charm and is actually an incredibly popular destination for people coming on tours throughout the Palouse. Any given sunset during the summer you will find a tour bus parked up with everyone outside with their tripods and long lense cameras snapping photos of the surrounding fields. Steptoe Butte offers an amazing 360º view of fields containing wheat, barley, garbanzo beans, peas, etc. It looks like an ocean of green and gold that goes on forever, the sweeping slopes and smooth lines look like something you want to jump in and swim through.

We went up on a random weekday evening in spring and had the entire place to ourselves. I wanted to go while the fields were still green since that’s one of my favorite times of year up there. It was so insanely windy up there we had to walk around for a bit to get our bearings and make sure we wouldn’t all tip over while trying to take photos. As insane as it was it made for such a fun addition to the shoot, Kelseys hair was flying everywhere and absolutely could not be contained and Ryan really had to try to not laugh every time it smacked him in the face. I think this session was a really great lesson in adverse weather, no it wasn’t raining sideways or thunder and lighting but wind can be as much of a deterrent. It made it incredibly cold and if you’re not careful with your surroundings it could send you over the edge of a cliff. We kept ourselves a good distance from the edge for that reason.

Sunset really decided to pop off for us that night, warm pinks and purples shining over Kelsey and Ryan as the sun went down. The shadow of the butte in the photo above is one of my favorites because even though she may be little, she can still cast a shadow on the beautiful landscape below.

Another lighting scenario I wanted to try to experiment more was blue hour light. Blue Hour is considered the hour right after the sun goes down over the horizon, when you still have light in the sky but everything gets this blue hue over top of it. It’s a time of day I don’t get to shoot in much because that’s usually also when it starts to get colder and colder, but Kelsey and Ryan stuck it out with me! We sat on the back of Ryans truck and popped some champagne and just enjoyed each others company. I had sure missed my friends.

To end the evening on our way down the hill I asked Ryan to stop dead center in the middle of the road so I could take some photos of them using the headlights on his truck. I was really wanting to stretch my creativity on using different lighting scenarios and I think this evening delivered! They danced in the headlights for me and we laughed and talked about life. A great end to a great day on the Palouse.

I think the moral of the story is to make sure to never stop dating your partner, take the trip, or just go have a picnic with a cheap bottle of wine and your favorite snacks! Watching Kelsey and Ryan make the most of a windy cold evening for this adventure session really made my heart happy. And if you’d like to have a fun date night, let me follow along and document it with you so you can always have some fun and flirty photos of you and your boo to look back on!