Landscape - 2nd HM

Luminous Landscape

A brilliant sunrise bathes the Painted Hills in central Oregon with sweet, radiant light.

(Long but cool story ahead!) I *almost* didn't get to shoot this image. The day before, Marc Adamus and I were making use of the harsh midday light by shooting a cave 170 miles away. Upon exciting the cave, we took a break in the parking lot, and I did something dumb: I placed my tripod on top of my vehicle "just for a minute" while I loaded my backpack and other gear. We then made our way slowly to the Painted Hills, taking all day to get there, and camping there for the night, planning on shooting sunrise there the next morning.

Well, the next morning arrived, and for the life of me I could NOT find my damn tripod! Then it hit me: I had stupidly left it on top of my vehicle and then drove away, which meant it was somewhere on the side of the road on the 170-mile path between the Painted Hills and the cave. Marc graciously let me use his tripod since he'd already shot the Painted Hills tons of times and I made the image you see before you.

Once the shoot was done, we had a decision to make: do we go back and look for my tripod or not? We still had many days left of shooting together, and the nearest camera store was in Portland, the exact opposite direction of our intended path to the Alvord Desert. We simply couldn't afford to lose that much time, but, on the other hand, there was no effing way I could possibly do landscape photography without a tripod.

So, with mountains of doubt and heavy hearts, we decided to try and find my tripod, which meant driving all the way back while scanning both sides of the road for 170 miles. Marc didn't want to do it. He reasoned that it was a lost cause, like looking for a needle in a haystack. But I begged with him that we at least had to try, otherwise the trip was over for me, not to mention the not-so-small fact that my tripod and head cost $1,400!

We drove and drove and drove, but no luck. Finally, as we were losing all hope we approached the final 50 feet to parking lot by the cave and THERE IT WAS, against all odds, sitting right next to where we had parked. No one had bothered to take it or anything! We both erupted in cheers and high fives and drove the 170 miles back to the Painted Hills grinning from ear to ear. We went on to have an awesome next several days shooting the Alvord Desert and this story became one of our favorite "remember when" tales.