Apple trees starting to bloom and snow covered Mt. Hood in the background.

Hood River Valley is the river basin of Hood River in northern Oregon . It is bounded by the Columbia River to the north, Mount Hood to the south, the Cascade Range crest to the west and an apparently unnamed ridge system to the east which contains Hood River Mountain and Snyder Canyon. Mount Hood National Forest surrounds the Hood River Valley west, south, and east. It is entirely contained in Hood River County.

The only city in the valley is Hood River. The major unincorporated communities are Odell, Parkdale, Mount Hood, and Dee.

The valley is known for its tree fruit agriculture—including one of the world's largest pear growing areas—farm tourism, and recreation related to its evergreen forested mountains providing opportunities such as hiking, mountain biking, whitewater sports, camping, and 31 fishing lakes. On the Columbia River is one of the top rated water sports areas in the world, particularly for kite boarding and wind surfing. On Mount Hood, snow sports draw thousands daily primarily at Mount Hood Meadows, but also Cooper Spur ski area on the east side of Mount Hood. Alpine hiking and mountain climbing are popular as well.

• Isaac Bashevis Singer.

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Couple of years ago, during our annual summer roadtrip, we visited the beautiful state of Oregon. I had seen many great photographs of Mt Hood from the north and wanted to take a shot of the mountain from the north in good light. The problem with traditional Trillium Lake and Lost Lake locations is that they do not get the best light during a summer sunrise. In my search for a summer vantage point we found out that the northern plains near Mt hood is amaze of small farms and county roads and can get very overwhelming.

I had heard about this farm that has a red barn and provides a nice composition of the mountain, unfortunately we visited during summer when the plants in the farm were at their full size, so we couldn’t see the farm but the light just before sunrise on that day was just fantastic. So, I found a small clearing from which th mountain was clearly visible and took a straight forward landscape shot. I used a 1 stop ND grad in this image and cropped the image into a square crop to exclude some distracting elements. I metered the brightest element in this image, which is the snow on top of the mountain. I dialed up the ISO to 400 for and aperture to 11 for enough depth of field.