Cascade Sunrise
Oregon

20×20″ prints are $1,500
30×30″ prints are $3,000

In 1995 Ruth and I visited my mother who was living in Corvallis, Oregon. We spent the night and got up before sunrise the next morning. I had a strong urge to drive to the top of Mary’s Peak in time for sunrise.

Mary’s Peak is the highest mountain in the Coast Range and from the top you have a 360° view. On a clear day you can see the Cascade Mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. I hadn’t been there for 30 years and wondered what photo opportunities might await me.

I started driving and then realized it was going to take longer than I thought to get there. And the sunrise was not going to wait even one minute for me. I drove up the winding mountain road as fast as possible since there was no traffic. The road goes almost to the top but you still have to walk about 1,500 feet to get to the peak.

We got there just as the sun was rising. I put my Hasselblad on the tripod and ran all the way to the top. I used my 250mm Superachromat lens to make this one photograph at f/8 on Fujichrome 50 film. The three mountain peaks in the center of the image are the Three Sisters in the Cascade Range, 85 miles away. After the sunrise was over we made our way back down the mountain, stopping once where I made the photograph “Fir Branch and Frozen Dewdrops.”

This transparency stayed in a box in my darkroom for 26 years until I made a Cibachrome print of it in 2011. I use a stretch carrier to print it to avoid dust and newton’s rings problems. It’s one of the few transparencies that I print without a contrast mask. There’s a beautiful progression of tonal values and wide range of colors that reproduce well on Cibachrome paper.