My favorite subject is light.  I love to photograph dramatic light.  This scene depicts the contrast found as the fiery burst of morning first invades a slumbering land.

Hours before making this image, I arrived at my perch overlooking Oregon’s Hood River Valley.  At that early hour, the valley was cast in a pre-dawn, infant light.  The pale landscape had not yet revealed its secrets.   I had come to this spot intent on photographing a snow-capped Mount Hood in the breaking dawn.

Having accomplished that, I could not leave – the landscape below me had come to life, its secrets revealed.  Sunlight began popping down the throats of canyons rimming the east, playing wonderfully across the orchards, vineyards, and hills spread throughout this valley.  I continued making photographs until the sun had crested the mountaintops and the entire valley had flooded with light.

This image, Morning’s Hill, is among my favorite captures in that valley.