Panoramic nominee

The grain elevators in this image are located near the town of Steptoe, Washington which is in the middle of the Palouse region that spans parts of the northwestern United States. The Palouse, which is home to the most beautiful grain fields in the world, is a loess formation, a geologist’s term for a very rich deposit of topsoil that were once giant dunes created by the wind. Loess formations only exist in a few places in the world—the Palouse is one of them. The topsoil of the Palouse Loess is an incredibly fertile substrate for wheat. This shot that I took in the springtime, shows both winter wheat that is ready to harvest and spring wheat that is growing.