LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY > THE WEST AND THE MIDWEST — USA > Lone Hill in The Great Plains Panorama
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This is one of my all time favorite photographs I’ve ever taken. Having been through the Rocky Mountains of Canada and the USA as well as the amazing World Heritage Areas of mountainous and coastal Tasmania, I sometimes wonder why I love this incredibly simple, somewhat featureless photograph more than all the grandeur of the magnificent mountains. I don’t know, but there is a beauty in its simplicity that really grabs me.
There is nothing glamorous about the story behind this photograph. My little girl needed a potty stop, and as you can see, we were miles from the nearest toilet. This is where we just happened to pull over. The lighting on the lone hill in the middle of nowhere in the vast Great Plains instantly captivated me, so I grabbed my camera and quick took a shot. It takes a day and a half to drive across the Great Plains east to west. The scenery doesn’t change much, but somehow their simplicity and vastness still grabs me.
The Great Plains are a vast area of grasslands that stretch from the southern USA to southern Canada. They are about 500 mi (800 km) east to west and about 2000 mi (3200 km) north to south. They cover an area of approximately 500,000 sq mi (1,300,000 sq km). The native prairies supported millions of bison until they were nearly hunted to extinction. They are now starting to make a recovery. Other animals of the Great Plains are pronghorn, prairie dogs and deer.