Shaded Relief Maps

Shaded Relief Maps Modern and historic cartographic prints

Put this map of the North Cascades together last week for a couple celebrating their anniversary. They wanted something ...
06/16/2025

Put this map of the North Cascades together last week for a couple celebrating their anniversary. They wanted something for their gear wall that captured their time exploring these mountains, from Winthrop and El Dorado Peak to Lake Chelan and everything in between.

The base is a 1962 USGS topo. I always come back to maps from this era for the balanced typography, the hand-drawn contours, and the way the linework holds detail without crowding the landscape. I’ve always admired the cartographers who assembled these quadrangles with such precision and restraint. I recolored it and added shaded relief to bring more depth to the terrain and soften the original palette while keeping the vintage character and timeless clarity of the original intact.

Glacial drama in grayscale. Everything here was either carved by ice or crushed under it
06/10/2025

Glacial drama in grayscale. Everything here was either carved by ice or crushed under it

03/31/2023

Light in motion on Emigrant Peak

Light and land
03/30/2023

Light and land

Crater Lake in oblique! Had some fun between larger projects over the weekend. More coming soon…
04/25/2022

Crater Lake in oblique! Had some fun between larger projects over the weekend. More coming soon…

04/17/2022

From old to new - the Bridger Range. 3D animation of elevation data filling in the highest peaks and down through Gallatin Valley. The basemap is from a custom extent of 1954 USGS quadrangles I composited and rendered a couple months back

Happy Montana Day! Make sure to get outside today and enjoy the 406! #406
04/06/2022

Happy Montana Day! Make sure to get outside today and enjoy the 406! #406

Mount Hood, 1962 USGS 7.5 Minute Series Composite
03/28/2022

Mount Hood, 1962
USGS 7.5 Minute Series Composite

03/23/2022

Another map animation, this time of the Grand Canyon! Similar to the Crater Lake animation, this one also uses the untouched original map from 1927 overlaid with a newer recolored basemap I created. For the recolored map I blended satellite imagery and elevation tinting to bring out color in the canyon. Love watching the terrain wash over the plateau and down the canyon

03/21/2022

From old to new. Played around with map animations over the weekend. Always fun! Overlaid the original untouched 1911 USGS basemap with the fully recolored edit I had made and offset the two in blender. The contrast between the different maps yields interesting results

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