Sunrise Photo Tour

Starting out there is a base anxiety about the light. How will it look? Will it be rich and glowing, or flat and boring?

Driving, trying to stay on the road while watching the sky and slurping coffee.

A moment when almost there, you glimpse a slice of sky and it looks perfect. Now faster, so as not to miss the lovely, soothing, sumptuous light of morning.
The glowing light is there, awaiting me and all is good.

The crunch of frozen dirt and the brown of the meadow entice me as I scramble down the short, steep hill.

I have visited this place 3 times this year, in spring, summer and now fall.

The spring trip in early July found this place a verdant green, a bright ‘like new’ color, smell and wetness. Hordes of mosquitoes swarmed me from the moment I made it down to the meadow. I sloshed along, navigating my way through the maze of the small stream filling the meadow. The winter snows melted here just 2 or 3 weeks ago, you can feel things growing.

Today the incessant drone of the bugs is absent as I walk towards the middle of the meadow. I see my breath as I turn around and look up to see Liberty Bell improbably jutting out of the plane before me.

Now as I write this I see that both improbability and uncertainty are what keep me coming back. Mountains always surprise me, I can’t get over that they are there, rifts and folds and waves of rock. Away from the everyday world of men things are simpler, and at the same time there is a natural chaos that I love very much.

The brown of the meadow is frosted white, I head out away from the road, watching the smaller stream and scheming for ways to incorporate it into the frame.

The early morning light backlights the larch, a thin strip of bright orange adorning the base of the peak. A brown-orange expanse, dotted with small trees and lined with small water channels pull my view forward.

Today is starting out pretty good.

Information about North Cascades Photo Tours and be found here!