Special Section >> Central Oregon PICTURE PERFECT
Cascades photography tour focuses on capturing beauty
Bend landscape photographer Douglas Bowser leads budding photographers on various workshops, including his most popular, shooting Sparks Lake at sunset.
The light is just beginning to shift as we make our way down the short path, cameras strapped around our necks, to Sparks Lake in Central Oregon. It’s late afternoon on a crisp fall day, and a recent regional forest fire has left a subtle haze in the high desert air.
The natural body of water, located near the crest of the central Cascade Mountain Range, is one of 20 lakes within about 20 miles of Bend. For those lucky enough to live here, it’s not a matter of making time for a visit to these peaceful ponds. Locals fish, canoe, kayak and stand-up paddleboard instead of going to the gym after work.
But we’re here to photograph the lake and the surrounding natural splendor. The view of South Sister, the tallest of the three peaks known as Three Sisters, is reflected in the calm waters of Sparks Lake, an iconic image captured by landscape photographers from all over the Pacific Northwest.
My instructor, Douglas Bowser of the Cascade Center of Photography, is one of them. He’s been a professional photographer for 30 years, first on the island of Maui and now in Oregon. As he explains it, the reason photographers keep coming back to this location and why it’s so easy to linger — crouching, clicking, checking and rechecking the camera’s LCD screen — is because the scene shape-shifts.
The difference among seasons is stunning, from the lake’s water level to the colors of the surrounding pine forest and the Sisters, bare or snow-capped. The mood, essence and end product can change dramatically even from hour to hour,