Category : Idaho

Idaho is a state of altitude and of two very different climates, and both show up in photographs. The south and centre are high, dry and clear: the Sawtooth Valley sits above six thousand feet, Sun Valley and the Teton side not far below, and at those elevations there is a seventh less atmosphere overhead than at sea level. Direct sun is harder, shadows are deeper than the temperature suggests, the sky is a deeper blue so open shade reads markedly cool, and the air is clear enough that mountains hold real detail on a long lens.

The Panhandle, north of the Salmon River, is a different place — an inland maritime climate where Pacific moisture reaches far enough east to grow western red cedar and hemlock, which means dense forest, soft overcast, and shade that blocks rather than dapples.

The species decide the shade everywhere in this state. Lodgepole and ponderosa hold their needles high and sparse and throw a moving dapple that is the hardest light a photographer meets outdoors; Douglas fir, grand fir, cedar and hemlock block almost everything and give a clean soft edge. Knowing which stand you are standing in is the practical difference between a usable portrait position and an unusable one. Two seasonal facts govern scheduling. Wildfire smoke can fill any Idaho valley from July into September, removing distant backgrounds entirely — which argues for weighting a late-summer day toward closer frames.

And late September into early October is the best window in the state: the aspen turn, and because a grove is clonal — genetically one organism — a whole stand goes gold at once, giving blocks of uniform colour against near-black conifer, with the first snow back on the peaks and the clearest air of the year.