Two hundred and twenty-two sunrises later, I’m officially done with this project. I had a lot of fun with it, and I’m glad to be done (“done”) with it (I’ll almost certainly have a photo book printed at some point).

The project spans a little more than a year—I began it—randomly and unplanned—on Tuesday, December 3, 2024, and took the final photo Thursday, December 31, 2025. The practice: each day that I went to the gym, I took a photo of the sunrise (“sunrise,” in some cases) over Mount Hood while standing in the same spot in the gym’s parking lot.

During the summer months, when the run rises here absurdly early, I’d interrupt my workout to run outside and take that day’s photo (the earliest photo in the series: 4:59 am on June 10). During the rest of the year, the sunrise happened later in the morning, closer to or right at the end of my workout, requiring much less planning and remembering to photograph (eventually, I set a reminder in my phone, adjusting it throughout the year so it popped up about 10 minutes before projected sunrise, to ensure I could work to a good interruption point in my workout to run out and take that day’s photo.)

One bummer about this project: Because I have a standing commitment on Monday mornings that requires me to leave the gym well before sunrise most of the year, I missed a fair number of beautiful Monday morning sunrises. I still took photos those mornings, they’re just not as stunning as the sunrise actually ended up being many of those days.

And the final two:

Below are larger photos of some of my favorite sunrises.

The three that started it all:

A solid set of January 2025 sunrises:

That purpley, pink-ish-orange!

I shared in the last batch of photos that I was surprised the most dramatic sunrises happened during fall and winter. Because our summer days feature more clear skies than do our days during there rest of the year, I’d assumed the summer sunrises would be the most dramatic. Nope! Most summer sunrises were lackluster. After a few in the spring, consistently pretty sunrises didn’t return till fall.

The sunrise on Halloween Eve is my favorite of the bunch.

The clouds on Halloween morning were so fucking cool. I wish my iPhone camera could capture just how incredible they were.

I wish, too, that my iPhone camera was able to capture what the sunrise the following week felt like. The way the sky was illuminated made it look and feel like it was glowing. It felt like standing in a dream. Very surreal.

Last but not least, a photo of the earliest sunrise of the year, mentioned above: 4:59 am, Tuesday, June 10, 2025. Absurdly early to be so light out.

Related: this person’s collection of 2025 sunset photos, and this person’s collection of all the flower-related photos they took in 2025.