I thought it would be fun to take pictures of Cascade sunsets from above to get more comfortable with using my drone. For eight consecutive days, I flew my DJI drone up to an altitude of 100 feet from my backyard. The mountains featured in these photos are approximately 26 miles away, as the crow flies.
These pictures show several volcanoes that are a part of Oregon’s Cascade Mountain Range. I recently featured aerial pictures of them from a closer perspective in another post.
Hope you enjoy these images of our spectacular skies near Bend, Oregon!
Colorful Cascade sunsets
The first photo shows a fiery sky. These are more commonly seen in the winter months around here.
January 23, 2025
The second photo shows a pale yellow background with the clouds floating over the mountains edged in pink.
January 24, 2025
Blue sky sunsets
The third photo shows a mostly clear sky. There appears to be a haze of smoke that could be from one of our prescribed burns in local forests. These controlled fires help prevent bigger fires.
January 25, 2025
The fourth photo shows another clear sky.
January 26, 2025
The fifth photo shows yet another clear sky. This time I took the photo right as the sun was setting over the mountains.
January 27, 2025
The next photo shows… uh, maybe we should pause for musical interlude. This song, Blue Sky & The Painter by Bastille, is one of my current favorites and it’s about blue skies.
Why did I include an interlude? Because there were more days without a single cloud in the sky when the sun set!
The sixth photo shows a clear day as the sun sets.
January 28, 2025
The seventh day shows, you guessed it, another sunny clear day.
January 29, 2025
Based on these photos, is it really true that Bend, Oregon gets 300 days of sunshine a year? Nope. However, we do have 250-260+ days a year that are clear or mostly clear.
Stormy Cascade sunsets
The eighth day shows, HURRAY!, clouds as a storm was moving in. A thick, dark cloud floated ominously over the snow-covered peaks.
The Oregon Cascade Range gets quite a bit of snow each winter. Mount Bachelor (shown on the left in these photos), as I stated in another post, gets over 400 inches of snow a year.
January 30, 2025
I may try taking sunrise pictures for a future post. I just hope that if I do, the clouds will cooperate. 😉
The dramatic cloud formations caught my attention in this Soda Springs scene.
Soda Springs is a small city in Idaho known for its geyser and mineral springs. The Soda Springs Geyser is on a timed release valve and it goes off once an hour. Yes, really!
Last Saturday, we had an Oregon Outback morning. We drove south of Silver Lake, Oregon to get a good view of the annular eclipse. Unfortunately, the clouds never cleared during the peak minutes of the eclipse. For today’s One-to-Three Photo Processing Challenge, I decided to make lemonade out of lemons.
Beautiful cloudscapes hung over the land, highlighting the Basin and Range topography. We stood in the middle of a basin surrounded by low mountains and buttes.
I used Corel PaintShopPro 2021 for different photo processing effects. In the original image I slightly increased the contrast and fill light and cropped the edges.
Oregon Outback morning photo effects
The first two show the original photograph and the same picture with a Black and White effect. For this image I went to Effects>Photo Effects>Black and White Film. I used the BW Heavy setting because it works well on clouds.
The next two show the original photograph and the same picture with a neon effect. For this image I went to Adjust>Hue & Saturation>Hue map>Neon glow. I liked how this effect enhances the mysticism associated with High Desert environments.
The clouds of Harney County form dramatic backdrops to the High Desert landscapes of eastern Oregon. I just returned from the four-day Harney County Migratory Bird Festival. Though I was there to see birds, the cloud formations draw your eyes to the skies.
Layers of fluffy clouds hung over the Battleground Buttes. Higher elevations in the county received 200% of their normal snowfall. Days before I arrived, these fields were covered with snow.
Battleground Buttes from Greenhouse Lane
Farther south, on the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, wispy clouds drifted in the wind. You can see part of Steens Mountain in the background. This 50-mile long mountain dominates the landscape.
Last October, we took a scenic drive along the Ochoco Highway in eastern Oregon. The landscapes in this area are punctuated by scenic rugged buttes, painted hills, rimrock mountains, and snow covered peaks.
Rustic buildings persevere, despite the harshness of the environment near Strawberry Mountain. Puffy overcast clouds filled the sky.
Black Butte stands out when you round a corner near Mitchell. The clouds in this picture were breathtakingly beautiful.
A winter aspen silhouette with a dramatic sunrise in the background photographed in Bend, Oregon. Spring is making an early appearance here in the High Desert and trees may be starting to leaf out soon.
Yesterday it was 73 degrees F here! Our high temperatures are usually in the mid-30s to 40s at this time of the year. We are having a weird, mild winter.
