https://www.chuckkoonce.com/blog daily 0.75 2026-05-09 https://www.chuckkoonce.com/blog/composition-in-art monthly 0.5 2026-05-09 https://www.chuckkoonce.com/blog/how-do-we-see-art monthly 0.5 2026-05-07 https://www.chuckkoonce.com/blog/Blog Post Title One-3zaa9-gfnmp monthly 0.5 2026-05-07 https://www.chuckkoonce.com/about daily 0.75 2026-05-07 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/aa32b0ee-e544-4675-9a0f-d776c1a33e1f/_MG_6676-2.jpg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/1778118415624-MEHTU343ZE26QF4F6MQ7/unsplash-image-a1t3WFcn6QA.jpg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/1778118635667-P7JSW7XI81Q1M3BU018D/unsplash-image-LPQcqpbCxeY.jpg https://www.chuckkoonce.com/contact daily 0.75 2026-04-28 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/89a967fa-2ccf-4c4c-97ae-a3e45b58ab30/_MG_2576.jpg https://www.chuckkoonce.com/home daily 1.0 2026-05-12 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/247f9c5d-6e34-418f-ba15-8ce415f17ae1/_8100069-103.jpg Home The mountain presents a complex upper ridge with multiple summits and connecting saddles, the geometry legible in fine detail because the light is direct and the air is clear. A shadow falls diagonally across the left-center of the face — the shadow of an adjacent ridge or secondary peak cast across the main snowfield https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/aadbd46b-b936-45a1-a4e2-4b51e7446a8b/_8100078-117.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/387a8540-36b4-4adf-a152-6b732fd2b562/_8100527-161-2-Edit-2-Edit.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/fce68d0d-95ea-43b3-8c06-4867da2c401c/_DSC1865.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/85f8dced-169d-48e0-bd0f-1cadbbd8c102/_DSC1871.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/5add27d4-542d-4578-ac12-d6d742dba46c/_DSC2957.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/4dacd4c7-9871-49ea-b1f3-b422542cd532/_DSC2964.jpg Home 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https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/be81dcc7-68b0-4d86-b392-d70a5d2b2f80/_MG_3060.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/021596b7-df99-4727-8e13-7767b70efb41/_MG_3095.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/89a967fa-2ccf-4c4c-97ae-a3e45b58ab30/_MG_2576.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/2e0f0c1a-236c-45cc-9c99-6306af05bbcd/CF013594.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/effc478e-2434-4ca5-b1a3-1894aa81a628/_MG_3259.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/ea49a878-d1f1-40c6-b79a-bbc0d716689d/_MG_4286-HDR.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/5971d0e8-7530-44ec-9e2b-9b73255edf55/_MG_3647.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/9dd1efd4-51a9-4544-966e-2210808258ec/_MG_2258.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/97f5df68-e85b-486e-838a-1d3d82c54c36/_DSF0180.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/44a1a6f0-ff65-4d67-a4ac-a37b97690716/_DSC4087-Edit-Edit-Edit.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/2cbae1aa-1898-4a0b-998e-03bfd03960ac/_DSC3362-Edit-Edit.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/4ec7c14b-548f-4e66-9f46-412f6f626775/_DSC1549.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/ab1cd158-7fa6-40d6-96a4-eb3a55f21788/_DSC3057.jpg Home https://www.chuckkoonce.com/gallery daily 0.75 2026-05-10 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/cf41c20d-7348-4edb-bd23-d7ab4657cb01/_MG_3851.jpg Gallery And above all of this forest, single and sharp against a pale storm sky, the main spire of the Early Winters formation: its rock face holding the snow in ledges and crevices, its pointed summit clear against the lighter cloud behind it, the secondary ridgeline elements to its left and right reading as subordinate to the central tower. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/581f1a0e-0002-4c5c-9be8-b08cbe006a4f/DSCF5449-Edit-Edit-Edit-2-Edit.jpg Gallery Kangaroo Ridge in serrated profile, its blade-like pinnacles and towers running left to right across the lower frame, snow patches holding in the couloirs and north-facing aspects between the rock spires. In the upper left, a faint curtain of virga trails from the overcast — precipitation falling from cloud without reaching the ground, the storm producing moisture that the dry column of descending air beneath it consumes before it arrives. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/9d122f63-c981-4086-bddd-cbe9a8d8cb7c/_8100066-102.jpg Gallery Two peaks occupy the frame in a relationship of scale and form that the eye immediately reads as a conversation: on the left, a smaller and more pointed summit — angular, jagged, its narrow ridge dropping steeply from both sides — and on the right, the larger massif, a broad pyramidal form whose southwest face receives the direct winter sun at full angle. That lit face is the image's dominant element: a sweep of snow-covered rock rising from the treeline to the summit, the snow surface differentiated by the raking light into visible texture — undulations, ribs, the dark threads of exposed rock that interrupt the snowfields in irregular bands. The face is not a uniform slope but a complex surface, and the directional light has revealed that complexity in the way that only low-angle winter sun at the right azimuth can. The forest occupying the lower third of the frame is dense old-growth coastal rainforest — trees of a hundred feet or more — and the peaks above them rise through several thousand feet of additional vertical relief without apparent effort. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/ad1c573c-8bbf-4e0d-9f9d-84e234bdfa3c/CF013594.jpg Gallery Where the mountain images commanded, this one whispers — and that restraint is what makes it so affecting. Fog in photography is a gift when used well, and this is used very well. It doesn't obscure the scene so much as it grades it — the cliffs and trees dissolve progressively as they recede, creating a natural depth that no amount of technical processing could replicate. The image gets softer and lighter as your eye moves back into the frame, which gives it an almost infinite sense of distance despite being a relatively contained coastal scene. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/f9bc40ae-12ae-464c-8a8e-3dffbb077cb4/_DSC3308-Denoise-Sharp.jpg Gallery A lenticular cloud has settled over Rainier's summit and claimed it. The cloud is perfectly formed — lens-shaped, smooth on its lower surface, billowing on its upper edge where it sheds into the larger weather system building behind the mountain — and it sits over the peak with the proprietary ease of something that has always been there. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/35279e4a-4342-4094-97e3-cc5e3c8acf80/_8100069-103.jpg Gallery The mountain presents a complex upper ridge with multiple summits and connecting saddles, the geometry legible in fine detail because the light is direct and the air is clear. A shadow falls diagonally across the left-center of the face — the shadow of an adjacent ridge or secondary peak cast across the main snowfield https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/06cea2b0-14a2-40e1-8f3b-91b6a9c3776a/_8100067-104.jpg Gallery A shaft of storm light has found the mountain's central face and illuminated it while leaving everything around it in darker register — the flanking ridges, the lower slopes, the turbulent clouds above. The effect is something between spotlight and revelation: the broad snow face glowing against the grey-dark sky, its surface texture suddenly legible in the raking light that has broken through a momentary gap in the overcast. The mountain is a massive form, its summit dome broad and glaciated, the upper face a steep continuous snowfield interrupted by dark rock ribs and avalanche chutes running from the summit toward the lower slopes. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/755224a3-1fd7-47c7-ab22-bc9a96ff0aa5/_8100078-117.jpg Gallery The foreground has become its own landscape. Wind has worked the deep snowpack into a series of rolling dunes and shallow basins, their surfaces curved and smooth where the wind has compacted them, shadowed in the hollows where the raking sidelight cannot reach. These wind-formed snow structures — sastrugi, in the terminology of polar meteorology, though here in a gentler expression than the severe ridges of high-latitude terrain — occupy the lower third of the frame with something approaching architectural intention: each curve is clean, each shadow sharp, the whole surface reading as a sculptural field that the eye explores before it lifts to the mountain beyond. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/9b695404-39df-4711-b693-b4ef98723b06/_DSC2953.jpg Gallery From within the forest or at its immediate edge, the mountain is seen in its full winter state: forested flanks dark and heavy with fresh snow, rocky ridgelines and upper summit towers breaking through the cloud above, the entire form filling the center of the frame with the presence of something that has absorbed the storm rather than fought it. The lower slopes read as dense texture — thousands of conifers, each holding its load of wet snow, the individual trees at this distance becoming a continuous surface of dark and light. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/04cfb148-1e3e-4498-93b6-414c3898faff/_8100272.jpg Gallery The sand fence is doing a lot of work here. Its rhythmic repetition of posts creates a strong visual beat across the frame, and the slight irregularities — gaps, leaning posts, broken sections — keep it human and imperfect. It anchors the foreground and gives the eye a natural resting point between the sand and the wild dunes behind. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/e9941baf-979f-4d50-9f98-60e95db02722/_DSC1865.jpg Gallery At this proximity, the spires cease to be a landscape and become a rock face. The full formation fills the frame from edge to edge: the left cluster of pinnacles — more complex and fragmented, multiple towers competing for height — and the right spire, taller, cleaner, its main face nearly planar in the way that only the hardest granodiorite produces. That right face is lit from the upper left, the directional light catching its surface at an angle that throws every crack, every crystal face, every variation in the rock's texture into relief. The face is not smooth — no face this large and this old is smooth — but it is coherent, a single surface interrupted by the vertical crack system that runs from its base toward its summit and that any climber looking at this image will recognize immediately as the line of ascent. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/ddc4cba6-dfcb-4112-8f7b-7d8fe7cad537/_8100330-Edit-Edit-Edit-Edit.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/d546918c-6eba-4a1f-975d-de42d997e427/_8100330-Edit-Edit-Edit.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/70226d31-b765-43f7-8566-a7f2e09f9853/_MG_1757.jpg Gallery The color is the revelation. The interplay between what's reflected above and what's seen through the water below creates a layered warmth that shifts as your eye moves across the frame. In the upper left there's a cooler, more silvery quality; in the lower right it deepens into rich copper and brown. The image breathes differently in different corners. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/96d9dca5-efeb-44d2-943f-d2f71be3a14f/_8100569.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/3fc3d717-79f0-4f47-af77-bf71816d472c/_8101343-234.jpg Gallery The tree reflection is the compositional spine. That branch arcing diagonally from the upper left down through the center, with its canopy spreading across the left half of the frame, is rendered in deep greens and warm amber where the bark catches light — vivid, almost hyper-real. The slight rippling of the surface distorts it just enough to give it movement and life without breaking its legibility. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/a2d0bb6c-b2f5-4898-bbc8-c8871b69de54/_DSC0101.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/22c0df79-8820-4bc9-9e2e-f95d4f22c7c1/_8103101-Edit-Edit-Edit-Edit-Edit-studio-Edit.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/f3c26eaa-8664-405b-880e-6315f27fdef6/_DSC0823.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/63ea4ef3-1bcf-4c62-8cce-0ca130f778a3/_DSC0828.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/28b9af14-aa0d-4ace-ab45-01e030b458ff/_DSC0989.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/34124c6f-3ae0-487c-8692-efc778f97b36/_MG_3060.jpg Gallery The sky is the drama. Those radial cloud streaks emanating from the glowing warm center behind and above the summit — catching orange and peach where the setting sun is finding gaps — against that deep blue-grey storm cloud mass have real energy and movement. The clouds appear to converge on Table Mountain itself, as if the peak is generating its own weather, which high Cascade summits essentially do. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/4c99b80d-d998-4933-8251-00258819486b/_DSC1201.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/1af77bfc-a408-43b7-8e97-27e529b79872/_MG_7107.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/fcec61dd-36e6-4679-8f4d-72d0f68c9aad/_DSC1550.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/19957bbd-a436-4793-9627-a7cb55e1ea76/_DSC1694.jpg Gallery Fireweed blooms in July and August at subalpine elevation, its tall spikes of pink-purple flowers one of the most recognizable events in the Pacific Northwest mountain calendar. It is also a colonizer — one of the first plants to return after disturbance, after fire, after avalanche — and its presence in a meadow in this abundance signals healthy, open subalpine terrain where the forest has not yet closed in. The meadow at Sunrise is exactly that: a broad opening in the treeline maintained by elevation and snowpack, and the fireweed has filled it completely in this midsummer moment. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/271b7e77-8420-47b9-bb34-ed2dadeff68d/_MG_3647.jpg Gallery The most minimal image in the section, and one of the most powerful. Nearly the entire frame is cloud — white, moving, the storm still active — and from its center a single rock spire emerges, its near-vertical face catching warm amber light from a sun somewhere beyond the frame that has found a narrow angle through the cloud to illuminate this one surface and nothing else. Everything in the image is grey-white except that warm face. The spire appears to float: its base consumed by cloud, its upper portion revealed, the rock suspended in white space with no visible connection to the earth below it. The snow-laden firs at the bottom of the frame are the only evidence that there is ground anywhere. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/687e1711-b93e-4a7b-9a29-4a74eeb07a61/_DSC1869.jpg Gallery The foreground snag is the image. Everything else — the mountain, the avalanche chute, the snow on the upper ridgeline, the small firs growing from the rock — exists in relationship to this piece of bleached wood lying across the granite slab. It is a whitebark pine or subalpine fir that fell long ago, long enough that the UV and weather have worked the surface down to silver-grey, the grain deeply revealed, the wood twisted along its length in the pattern of its growth. It is sculptural in the way that only very long exposure to the elements produces — not carved but revealed, the softer material gone and the structure beneath it made visible. It has been lying on this rock longer than most of the living trees around it have been alive. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/c0e80c74-0cf8-435f-8304-a2ff782e2472/_DSC2957.jpg Gallery From the rim at Washington Pass, the land simply falls away. This eastward view down into the Early Winters Creek drainage does not offer the panoramic sweep of open summits — it offers the opposite: a plunge into obscured depth, the valley floor swallowed entirely by cloud and fog so that the canyon walls appear to hang suspended, unmoored from any ground. The left wall rises in warm rust-orange rock, iron-stained metamorphic faces dusted with fresh snow, while the right ridge — jagged and serrated in the characteristic North Cascades manner — recedes into grey atmosphere. Between them, nothing. The absence where the earth should be is the image's true subject. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/c6f80041-d4db-4035-8417-1c994f503939/_DSC1871.jpg Gallery This image presents the full Early Winters formation: twin summits of dark metamorphic rock rising to sharp, asymmetric points, their faces streaked with warm amber where the iron-bearing gneiss catches what light the overcast permits. Fresh snow covers the upper slopes and wraps itself into the rock's crevices and ledges, white against grey rock under a sky of deep pewter cloud. Below the spires, a wide apron of terrain descends in distinct layers: the orange of western larch just entering its autumn turn, a forest catching fire in the middle ground before winter finishes it. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/a940c98a-c0bd-43fa-bbcb-9b913d20f389/_DSC0806.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/7c1c1f16-c36d-4b8a-bd3d-4edf6a891eea/_DSC0912.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/d913063b-75e9-468e-92b8-262be2fcd6d3/_8101791.jpg Gallery This is Mt. Baker at its most iconic and majestic, and the simplicity of this composition is what makes it so powerful. That unbroken field of pure amber-orange sky is extraordinary. No clouds, no gradients, no distractions — just that wall of saturated golden light filling the entire upper half of the frame. It's the kind of sky that only exists for a few minutes at the peak of a truly exceptional sunset, and capturing it this clean and pure requires both timing and clear atmospheric conditions. The warmth of the sky against the cool blue-violet of the layered ridges below creates one of the most satisfying color contrasts in landscape photography. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/6853a3b0-810d-4817-ad46-0612a9132573/_DSC1911.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/ff3c8eb0-9078-4615-9188-1073da5faac4/_DSC2022.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/b5ca880d-8e01-4c3d-ba98-3519b899d00a/_DSC2381.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/35ce6685-916c-447d-a3bb-21333c18b001/_DSC2096-2.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/c185d469-82de-43c3-9c00-8307dccfad61/_DSC2224.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/eaf2a279-815d-43cb-88bf-94a34cd82522/_DSC1837.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/2627287d-bf30-4bf5-a23c-d253efd65a94/_DSC2248.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/fb22bf37-ee67-403b-b601-41f4aeb57abc/_DSC2093.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/5fef1ac8-ba80-49f7-97b7-db59ea0700cf/_DSC2334.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/e019fb9d-97a0-49ba-ba8c-1a37f06bb0f6/_DSF0180.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/f269ea56-2958-4e83-b0cd-639082322a98/_8103180.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/b6714c96-6d59-465e-bc33-93ec0981e078/_DSC2270.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/f4fb8d26-8ae9-4e27-bedf-39a02f3b0e06/_DSC3364.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/e2f0f7e9-0d10-4929-a29f-d76a99e8a509/_DSC3360.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/07dce19f-e8b3-405d-8521-201eb5a6d8d2/_DSC2261.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/71a9c06e-3e18-4a6d-9c64-a632648f28ec/_DSC3368.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/2ffddbe1-fde5-4af5-9100-1efe807052e0/_DSC2956-2.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/9bde110e-f3fd-4fa3-9c1d-407fe9008d6e/_DSC2970-Edit.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/5a39d6e5-e48f-49be-bb8e-b81ad6a918cd/_DSC2970-2-Edit.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/0a9d3c2d-a918-4f7a-b89b-cda294246f3b/_DSC0902.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/4f710889-586c-487f-b458-0bd0762f4828/_DSC3347.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/7218804e-56bd-4b63-9022-cedba8387a0e/_DSC9172.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/5672ebb4-65e0-4db3-b4ac-2a41b8cfc905/_DSC2941.jpg Gallery The ridgeline itself is the subject, and it's a compelling one. Kangaroo Ridge is one of those Cascades formations that looks almost impossibly vertical — that serrated spine of granite spires running diagonally from lower left to upper right, each point sharp enough to suggest it's still being actively pushed upward. The cloud wrapping around the mid-section of the ridge, partially obscuring some spires while leaving others in clear air, creates exactly the kind of partial revelation that makes mountains feel mysterious rather than simply large. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/e98d8b25-4a87-4d31-af2d-4f0839ff2514/_DSC3362-Edit-Edit.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/3c580152-5a76-41da-a388-9db534079e9f/_DSC1697.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/e7745011-44ab-4e0c-9ef0-ffb08cb96391/_DSC4004.jpg Gallery The mountain backdrop is the crucial addition. Where the first Mendenhall image was essentially ice against grey sky, this one gives you the full context — the green, vegetated slopes rising behind the glacier’s edge, the cloud-wrapped peaks above, the red and brown of exposed rock where the ice has recently withdrawn. That strip of living mountain behind the ice margin is both compositionally rich and ecologically significant. You can see exactly where the glacier ends and the world it’s uncovering begins. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/d0123d89-f6ce-48c3-b26c-8294c7356c50/_DSC4081-Edit.jpg Gallery The composition works through clear horizontal bands — the golden-amber foreground shrubs and grasses at road level, then the spruce treeline, then the autumn-colored lower mountain slopes in rusts and oranges, then the bare upper ridge, and finally the snow-dusted peaks emerging into a sky of deep blue and volumetric clouds. What keeps this from being a simple layered landscape is the light: it comes from the right at a low angle, catching the turning birch and willow in the foreground and lighting them almost from within, while leaving the left side of the mountain range in cooler shadow. That differential lighting — warm golden foreground, cool shadowed mountain mass — creates depth without any atmospheric haze. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/39416dfc-8c87-4c84-9f87-89f5d6e7f64d/_DSC3457-Edit-Edit-Edit.jpg Gallery The long exposure alchemy is the technical achievement at the heart of this image. What you're seeing isn't a waterfall — it's wave water that has been thrown against that cliff face and is cascading back down, captured over several seconds so that each successive surge layers into the next, building those veil-like curtains of silky white. The ocean is doing something it does every few seconds at Cape Disappointment; the camera has compressed those repeated actions into a single image that looks like something permanent and geological rather than momentary and tidal. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/62b8694e-4d22-4660-bf0f-a1e29f5909c0/_DSC4087-Edit-Edit-Edit.jpg Gallery A significant geographic leap — out of the Pacific Northwest entirely and into a landscape that operates at a completely different scale and geological character. The mountain geometry on the left is the immediate signal that this is somewhere fundamentally different. Those steep, deeply couloir-scored peaks — bare rock above treeline, the purple-brown of exposed mineral geology rather than the soft green of the Olympic or Cascade ranges — speak to a younger, more dramatic uplift. The near-vertical faces and sharp ridgelines are characteristic of Alaska's coastal ranges, where glaciation has been more recent and more aggressive. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/2e38145c-bf06-4364-9a37-49d19e38ca99/_DSC4119-Edit-Edit-Edit-Edit.jpg Gallery The lichen-covered granite erratics in the foreground establish the geological deep time of this landscape immediately. These boulders were deposited by glaciers that retreated thousands of years ago, and the slow-growing lichen colonizing their surfaces — the grey-green crust, the darker patches — speaks to centuries of patient accumulation. They are the oldest visible things in the frame, and they anchor everything. In a section about land and scale, they are the measure: the boulders are large, and yet the terrain that produced and deposited them is vaster still, invisible beyond the frame. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/bafd06e9-76d1-401c-b049-317c4541fc33/_DSC4485.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/61a58b6f-f900-44a5-b93d-58d8c029ea42/_DSC4575-Edit.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/ffaae4f4-d994-498c-9fe7-0795ab124169/_MG_3060.jpg Gallery Table Mountain — that distinctive flat-topped basalt butte above Heather Meadows — caught it in genuinely dramatic conditions. The low camera angle is the defining compositional choice. By getting down close to the lichen-covered granite slabs in the foreground, I’ve given the rocky plateau in front of the foreground mass and texture, while simultaneously making Table Mountain's summit block loom larger and more imposing against the sky. It's a perspective that conveys being there — the physical experience of scrambling across this exposed rocky terrain — rather than simply documenting the view. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/e1b3e366-c92a-4502-93db-db51cde29045/_DSC5769.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/579def7c-923e-4ed9-82cf-fed3f03cd0a7/_DSC8773.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/55a876b1-046d-4970-8f23-896e318bb224/_DSC9500.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/56c7166d-a0de-4cd4-bf2e-775a2b6345bd/_DSC2835-Pano.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/63787640-7536-47cf-acea-c1086d357406/_DSC1965.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/5cfb1cec-caa3-4518-9006-3f58173377cc/_8100527-161-2-Edit-2-Edit.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/1e582064-0bf1-480a-9337-5b0ef44cfe11/_MG_0561-Edit-Edit-2-Edit.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/9b219e1e-852f-40e6-9ca6-054616dff650/_DSC3223.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/810e55a8-ce74-4d35-99e1-eb737cb32b40/_DSC0499.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/669385f3-1ca4-474d-81a8-11dfb5179e7f/_MG_1791.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/0ca0e0f4-e4ee-40de-b053-2af78da895fc/_MG_2258.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/3b9472aa-fbd4-42c2-a080-55ef1951df8d/_MG_2309.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/126a6905-b477-45a9-9b0c-d0c1acbd5e87/_MG_2591.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/5950938b-a0cb-4181-b3b0-c9e594edb853/_MG_2682.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/cb5c8bff-d010-488e-a4ad-8f4aad6e6270/_DSC3324.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/5d6eaf6e-7132-4f31-a02d-17050541a1cc/_MG_2705-Edit-Edit-2-Edit-Edit.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/cd53ece2-4795-4dbf-9ae0-c68d13509180/_MG_2790.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/2f842451-f873-434d-943c-40b5422f8223/_MG_3471.jpg Gallery Table Mountain occupies the center of this image as both geological anchor and chromatic spectacle. The flat-topped basalt mesa — its summit plateau dark and horizontal against the grey sky — presents its flanks as a canvas of autumn color running in vertical and diagonal streaks down the rock: orange heather, rust-red huckleberry, lime-yellow sedge, green residual, all organized by the micro-habitats of gully, ledge, and exposed face. The autumn color palette here is the widest in the collection: from the deep crimson-scarlet of the foreground huckleberry through orange and amber on the mid-slope shrubs to the streaked rust and gold on Table Mountain's face, with the dark green of the firs providing the counterpoint that makes every warm color register more intensely. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/2edc247a-fe33-4850-b76e-532a871e77a5/_MG_3691.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/6fb2f9c8-1d62-403a-b226-065b2f9ab6c2/_MG_5015.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/bac25989-76c6-40c1-b905-38a9cc75a6b7/_MG_5006.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/3b9587c0-8950-406d-9428-867b39798251/_MG_5243.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/17845d09-8ae6-4471-a782-7726a6398ba2/_MG_6504.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/4d3f27e2-1100-433b-a09e-33c1df0ada6c/DSC_0529-Edit-Edit-Edit-Edit-Edit-2.jpg Gallery The central paradox is what arrests you immediately. The rocks appears to be floating in mid-air. The water around them is so filled with reflected autumn color — the golds, oranges, and greens of the surrounding forest — that it reads as a luminous, painterly background rather than a surface. The rocks sit on the waterline, its reflection extending below it into that warm tapestry, and the result is visually destabilizing in the best possible way. Your brain takes a moment to resolve what it's seeing. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/0d75df53-d1e2-4e18-8728-c7fde5bae74b/_MG_6617.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/a0904ce4-bb12-4eb0-985d-2357fd4c41a6/_MG_6736.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/7816f98d-83da-4247-8fa0-5a8067ef68b7/_MG_7109.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/9a6ecb5c-a276-49d6-a158-cc6cbfa88697/_DSC9433.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/bf361c6f-be54-42a0-a4e0-13f0c85ba109/_DSC3057.jpg Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/da860673-9823-456c-ab84-7f4a99303707/DSCF0092-Edit-Edit.jpg Gallery https://www.chuckkoonce.com/store daily 0.75 58293-08-23 https://www.chuckkoonce.com/store/p/poster monthly 0.5 2026-04-29 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/1777432641552-RTVU0PUIQES9JN8XRN22/enhanced-matte-paper-poster-%28in%29-10x10-front-69f178389e7ce.jpg Store - Poster https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/1777432644467-QRHSSSX3ND4A27MGBIJ4/enhanced-matte-paper-poster-%28in%29-a1-%2823.3x33.1%29-front-69f178389fb0a.jpg Store - Poster https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/1777432647564-E5E958XW6BQOABI1JIXO/enhanced-matte-paper-poster-%28in%29-a2-%2816.5x23.3%29-front-69f178389fc03.jpg Store - Poster https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/1777432652428-RLUTRTIYLD6HG5OZUAO9/enhanced-matte-paper-poster-%28in%29-11x14-front-69f178389fd9b.jpg Store - Poster https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/1777432655439-522IN55FA9PAN480IN4S/enhanced-matte-paper-poster-%28in%29-12x12-front-69f178389feb5.jpg Store - Poster https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/1777432663438-KTUNZ0U4ASB3XYWPBKD0/enhanced-matte-paper-poster-%28in%29-12x16-front-69f178389ffd4.jpg Store - Poster https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/1777432668398-UQVT4QZWWUBO13SVSH95/enhanced-matte-paper-poster-%28in%29-12x18-front-69f17838a00e6.jpg Store - Poster https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/1777432671436-214W93WLO7V1NN0NOQZ0/enhanced-matte-paper-poster-%28in%29-14x14-front-69f17838a0206.jpg Store - Poster https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/1777432675427-POECO3HFIVUOOXV9CXS7/enhanced-matte-paper-poster-%28in%29-16x16-front-69f17838a0326.jpg Store - Poster https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/1777432683405-QY73Q3R4WBMH0K2A4KG3/enhanced-matte-paper-poster-%28in%29-16x20-front-69f17838a0447.jpg Store - Poster https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/1777432686570-VOOUGFXOCBFXCLLTC3AX/enhanced-matte-paper-poster-%28in%29-18x18-front-69f17838a055e.jpg Store - Poster https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/1777432691570-BO94F9UMI4X9OC8GLSDG/enhanced-matte-paper-poster-%28in%29-18x24-front-69f17838a0683.jpg Store - Poster https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/1777432694490-S6RK3R92PU30N4I70E7X/enhanced-matte-paper-poster-%28in%29-20x30-front-69f17838a07ac.jpg Store - Poster https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/1777432697452-FDYXAM9ML459QG9SCAVB/enhanced-matte-paper-poster-%28in%29-24x36-front-69f17838a08be.jpg Store - Poster https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/1777432701473-P8S5T5T4Z67LYW97E02G/enhanced-matte-paper-poster-%28in%29-5x7-front-69f17838a09ce.jpg Store - Poster https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69f03b8e263e882a5a527df0/1777432704474-CMQL7VDG07Z2HREK0B39/enhanced-matte-paper-poster-%28in%29-8x10-front-69f17838a0adf.jpg Store - Poster