North Cascades sunrise engagement photos | David & Michelle

I met David and Michelle at 2 am for this North Cascades engagement shoot. Yea. I know that sounds a little insane, but just scroll through the photos. I think it was worth it. We headed out to the North Cascades National Park just as larch season was in full bloom and right as the snows began.

Now, you might be wondering, why in the world would you wake up at that time? Well, sunrise was at about 7:30 am and we wanted to be on top of a ridge that faced eastward when that happened. In order to be there at the right time. We needed about 2 hours to complete the 2k vertical ft hike over 3 miles to get there. So, that meant leaving the parking lot around 5-5:15 so we’d have a little time to spare. So, with the parking lot being 3 hours from Seattle, that left us no choice but to be in the car at 2 am. It’s perfectly reasonable.

Oh and as for timing, it couldn’t have been better. We stopped just in time to change and had about 7 minutes of the sun actually breaking between the horizon and the clouds. It was beautiful, incredible and also so stinking cold. I honestly couldn’t feel my camera fingers and had to just hope that I was jamming them into the shutter hard enough to make the photos. This should come as no surprise, but metal camera bodies get cold in the snow. 😉
But, joking aside, it was an absolute joy to spend the day hiking in the North Cascades with David and Michelle. These two fell in love in the mountains and it’s just their home. They made every hill fun and we laughed our whole way through the hike. I also made a video from the day, so feel free to follow this link and see a little more from this day in the hills.

From a photographer’s perspective, it was fun because I brought my Mamiya RZ67 film camera with Kodak Portra 160 with us up the mountain. Though that brick of metal was just absolutely freezing, I love the rich depth that these photos created and it was just fun to use this camera out in the mountains.

Thanks again to David and Michelle for this engagement session. I’m so excited for their Artist Point elopement in the mountains.