Waking Up at Four AM for a Mountain Photography Shoot Can Be Torturous
as always, the full gallery is at the bottom, so skip there if you don’t care about the words
There is a specific kind of tired that only exists at four in the morning. Your body is heavy. Your brain is foggy. Every cell inside you is begging to stay wrapped up wherever you are sleeping. On my Mount Lassen and Shasta project, this alarm went off more than once and every single time it felt the same. A small internal battle between comfort and purpose, fought in total darkness before the sun even thinks about rising.
The first morning this happened, I had big plans. Sunrise photography at Mount Lassen. Big dramatic light hitting the peak. I dragged myself up, looked outside, and saw nothing but thick fog rolling across the landscape. No epic light was coming. So, I made the only choice available without forcing a bunch a bad images and went back to sleep for a few more hours.
Sometimes the four AM wake up is not about forcing magic to happen. Sometimes it is just about checking the conditions and making a smart call based on what you actually see.
The next time that alarm went off, conditions were different. I was driving to Manzanita Lake in complete darkness, the world outside painted in this deep blue color that exists for only a short window before sunrise. That drive felt different than the foggy morning before. There was a pull in my chest, a sense that something good was waiting on the other side of that drive. Waking up at four in the morning when you believe the payoff is coming feels completely different than waking up when you are unsure. Your body still aches the same amount but your mind treats the exhaustion like fuel instead of punishment.
Then there was summit day on Mount Shasta. Three in the morning that time, even earlier than the Lassen mornings. I ate a quick breakfast of oats, set up a camera shot of my tent glowing under moonlight, and felt this strange mix of excitement and dread settle into my stomach. I knew the day ahead was long. I knew my body was already tired from the days before. But I also knew that the entire reason I was up there, the photographs, the brand deliverables, the story I wanted to tell, all depended on getting up and moving while the rest of the world was still asleep.
Here’s What Lives In My Gear Bag:
Sony a7r4; my work horse
Sony a7s3; mostly for video work like solo-filmmaking documentary
Tamron 16-30; probably my favorite lens right now
Tamron 28-75; I think this is the best all around focal length
Tamron 70-180; I don’t use this a ton, but it’s a great lens
What people do not understand about these early wake up calls is that they are not glamorous. Nobody sees the part where you are sitting in the dark, boots half on, trying to convince your body that this is worth it. They only see the finished photograph. The golden light hitting the mountain. The dramatic landscape shot that took two seconds to capture but required hours of preparation and a brutal alarm clock to make happen. The real work, the unseen work, is dragging yourself out of warmth and into the cold dark unknown over and over again because you believe the shot is worth the suffering.
By the end of this seven day project, four AM and three AM wake ups had become something close to normal. Your body adjusts in strange ways when you give it no other choice. The exhaustion never fully disappears but your relationship with it changes. You stop fighting it as hard. You start trusting that the discomfort is temporary and the photograph, the story, the moment you are chasing, is usually worth every miserable second of getting there.
That is the real secret behind every beautiful mountain photograph you have ever seen. Somebody woke up exhausted, cold, and unsure, and decided to go outside anyway.
Thank you for reading this journal entry. If you have enjoyed it and have something to add, send me an email: dj@dalton-johnson.com
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The Day’s Gallery
About Dalton:
Dalton Johnson is a photographer, direcot, and writer (award-winning at all three) based in South Lake Tahoe, CA.
Over the last 10 years, Dalton’s creative work has taken him to every continent, above the arctic circle, and below the antarctic circle.
