The painted hills in central Oregon is one of my favorite places in the state. The Painted Hills are located in the Painted Hills Unit of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument along Hwy 26 just west of Mitchell. Even though the hills don’t cover much area, the patterns and shapes and the way light plays across them is visually absorbing. I often take wide landscapes, but for this image I decided to zoom in for an intimate and abstract study. When photographed like this, the hills really do look painted…or rather, they create a photograph that looks like a painting. I’ll have to print this large on canvas and see how it looks.