I recently traveled to Kansas — not a highly popular destination for landscape photographers. But that’s exactly why I went there. While other photographers are lined up elbow-to-elbow at places like Mesa Arch and Horseshoe Bend, I’m photographing a landscape where there’s not even a another human being (much less another photographer) literally for miles.
I’m just not interested in shooting those same overcrowded hotspots. This is my first time in Kansas and I have found it to be more scenic than I expected — which is something like I saw in the Texas Panhandle — a flat, featureless landscape covered in wheat fields or corn. But there’s a lot more to Kansas than that. I liked it a lot and honestly I can’t wait to go back to explore more of the state.
There are nearly-abandoned small towns.
There are a lot of beautifully abandoned ramshackle old farmhouses.
And there are landscape oddities, like the mushroom rocks at Mushroom Rock State Park.
Kansas was once home to the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, Kansa, Kiowa, Osage, Pawnee, and Wichita tribes. And it is very beautiful in a different kind of way.
And, it still has a LOT of dirt roads, hence all that “dust in the wind.”
Be sure to visit my website at keithdotson.com.
Black and white photographs of abandoned farmhouses in Kansas
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~ Keith