On our cross country drive back from Oregon this past September, my son and I decided to head to Badlands National Park, a destination that had been on my bucket list for a while. In doing research, I found that there were a great number of places in the surrounding area that were ripe for photography. One such place was Custer State Park, located in the Black Hills of southwestern South Dakota.
After driving from the Oregon Coast and over the Rocky Mountains, the park was a very different landscape. Rolling hills and active wildlife can best describe the park. You can see buffalo throughout the park, and we saw plenty. The park is pretty big, covering about 71,000 acres. While parts of the park have lots of trees, there are open spaces with a tree here or there. This photo is one of those trees. I really wanted to shoot a minimalist composition after spending the previous days shooting the massive Grand Tetons.