Jonsrud Viewpoint Sunrise - Planned w/ PhotoPills

A little planning goes a long way in landscape photography. I'm not sponsored or anything by PhotoPills, but I must say their app is fantastic if you ever want to plan out a shoot in advance or just wonder if things will ever align just right for an image. Literally everything is in there to plan out your trip and you can answer just about any question you might have about shooting including equipment, framing, and the alignments of the stars according to your surroundings. I could literally go on for ever, but I'll spare you all that. If you want to know more, check them out at http://www.photopills.com 

The image I shot this morning was planned out well in advance as it all started with a simple question. Does the sun ever rise right over Mt. Hood? The answer was inevitably yes and with that, I had to go! Wednesday was technically the best day with near perfect alignment, but I had work and Thursday would work out almost as well for the shot I had in mind. I have visited this location once before to scout it out when the conditions were much less than ideal giving me the vision for what I wanted the image to be. 

The moment the sun appeared around the mountain.

I did not know how the actual light conditions would behave. As the sun rose it created a weird shadow above the peak that moved with the sun. It was truly a bizarre event as it rotated opposite of the sun around the peak. The other thing was just how quickly the sun would move across the scene while I shot. I knew the exact minute it would appear, but what I didn't know is that I had about 10-15 seconds to shoot before it was too large and flaring more than I would like. I got the shot in the end though, and what an image it is when processed and finished!

Taken just a couple seconds after the sun had originally appeared. The flare had already grown a substantial amount to the size I had envisioned when planning.