I’m not very good at making landscape photographs. I was I was better at them. I aspire to be better at them. For some reason I find the prospect of making a good landscape intimidating. More intimidating than photographing a naked woman. Go figure. My theory is that I was exposed to way too many photographs by Ansel Adams when I was growing up. It is hard to believe you will ever make anything nearly as good when that is all you look at between the age of twelve and seventeen. I don’t know. That is probably a rather dumb theory, but it is the best I’ve got.

These two photographs were made on the trail to Ramona Falls near Mount Hood about ninety minutes from Portland. I actually made these two images when I was hiking back to the car after already visiting the falls. All I had left with me was a roll of Kodak Portra 400 which had been floating around my bag for several months. I had been saving the roll for a shoot I have next month with a model that has bright green eyes, but I thought the scene looked incredibly nice I didn’t want to just pass it by without taking out my camera. I’m used to seeing Mount Hood in the distance from Portland proper, but being a bit closer while out and about was inspiring and I thought I would do my best to capture it.