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.

This project is still going strong and also I’m looking forward to ending—or, some might say, sunsetting (heh)—it at the end of the year.

The sun rises about an hour and a half later these days than it did during the height of summer. Most mornings, this time doesn’t overlap with a natural stopping/breaking point in my workout. There have been more times during this stretch of photos than I’d like to admit that I’ve completely forgotten to take a photo until my workout’s over and I’m walking to my car. One morning, I’d already gotten in my car and was about to drive away before I remembered to take a photo. Oops. The good news is, there are no rules for this project. Forgetting to take a photo (or multiple photos) wouldn’t have been the end of the world. Or the project.

Surprisingly, winter offered more dramatic sunrises than did spring or summer. I thought for sure the sunnier months would’ve offered more stunning sunrises, in terms of both frequency and intensity. Maybe I just missed them. Or maybe not? Given how cloudy many spring and summers mornings were, I’m not convinced I did.

If everything goes as planned, there will be 56 more gym parking lot sunrises between now and the end of the year.

On Tuesday, December 3, 2024, I took a photo of the sunrise while standing in the parking lot of my gym before getting in my car and driving home. It was the clearest and most colorful sky I’d seen in a long time, and the silhouette of Mt. Hood in the distance (which is very difficult to see in these tiny photos) was breathtaking. I did it again on Thursday, the next day I was at the gym, and then again on Friday. And then I kept doing it every day that I went to the gym, regardless of how clear and colorful the sky was or wasn’t.

By Friday, just three days in, I’d decided to keep taking one of these photos for a full year. Or until I forget. Or until I don’t want to anymore.

This morning, I took the 100th (!) gym parking lot sunrise photo. When I started taking these photos, the sunrise coincided with the time I was leaving the gym, around 7:20 am. Now, the sun is rising right around the time I finish the first exercise of the day’s programming, around 5:20 am. Soon, for a stretch, it’ll be even earlier than that.

So far, I’ve not missed one. If I eventually do, that’s okay. Despite what my brain keeps insisting, the project doesn’t have to end because of it.

This project was completely unplanned and I’m still not sure if something physical will come from it (a photo album? a poster? a secret third thing that hasn’t revealed itself to me yet?), or how long it’ll last. That’s okay. I don’t need to know right now.

I’ve enjoyed taking these photos, even on the cloudy and foggy and dark and dreary and rainy mornings, and I enjoy having them, even if nothing more than this post comes from them. It’s been such a fun way to track the Pacific Northwest morning sky over the last several months.