While on Assignment for Qatar Museum’s Year Of Culture, I had the opportunity to photograph this collection of aerial images featuring Oregon’s Mount Hood. Accompanying me on this flight was my go-to and trusted pilot, Christian Walker as well as my good friend and Qatari counterpart for the Year of Culture photo assignment, Khalifa.
The following images are a small portion of what was created for a collaborative gallery between myself and Khalifa called “Light & Shadow: A Visual Journey Through Oregon” which is currently on display at the Qatar Institute of Culture in Washington DC. Special thanks to photographer Michael Shainblum for curating the gallery and for producing!
Our first photography flight was out to Oregon’s Mount Hood in the early evening. Once we took off and reached a higher altitude, we were finally able to see the mountain that was masked in clouds below. I started the shoot off by using a telephoto lens to focus on various portions of the mountain. I liked how doing this made my images appear to be more abstract and harder to recognize.
I also noticed Mount Hood’s Sandy Glacier through the clouds as it was catching some beautiful light from the setting sun. We moved closer to the mountain so we could photograph looking down on the glacier. I enjoyed photographing these telephoto closeups of the glacier’s jagged and abstract patterns. Having a birds eye view aerial perspective was a really special way to view the glacier as well as photograph it!
Time seemed to move so fast. Even though we had already been up for about an hour and a half, the sun began to set and the final moments of golden sunlight on Mount Hood was stunning. Paired with the low clouds hugging the base of the mountain, the remaining images of this flight were some of my favorite aerial photographs of the mountain I have ever taken!
The light quickly faded and we made our way east towards Central Oregon to focus on photographing the Central Cascade mountains at sunrise the following morning.