Jeff Engelhardt's photostream  

Hello flickr, it's been a long time. I hope you've been well. I may start posting occasionally again, we'll see. The best thing - by far - about this site is the people I've met. Last night I got out shooting with a couple guys I've wanted to meet for a long time - Jeff Eickhoff and Nicolas Bouvier. Both really talented guys whose work I've admired for a long time, and it turns out they're wonderful people to shoot with as well.

I didn't end up getting anything great last night, so the main shot above is from a few days before Christmas at Westlake Center - a wealth of people watching. The above, and some of the below, were shot with my new 135mm f/2 - a wonderful, wonderful lens (at least on a full frame camera).

Looking forward to getting back to some of ya'lls photostreams that I've missed lately - Lee, Lance, Clay, etc . . and hope you all have a wonderful holiday.

This has been a long time in coming. I grew up with a poster of this falls (albeit from a different angle) on my wall. I *finally* made it out there this weekend . . way out on the Olympic Peninsula, not far from that little place where the Twilight novels & movies took place (Forks, WA).

Thanks to Lance for tips on where to go/what to do. An Olympics expert, he is.

Is anyone still on flickr? Or have they all migrated to 500px?

One of the things that really surprised me about the drive, all the way from Vancouver, BC area to Anchorage is that a significant majority of it is . . . worthless. There are hundreds upon hundreds of miles of low rolling hills of wet tundra or "muskeg." It's not arctic tundra, which is at least "interesting" in that it is often very pretty (great for macro shots), vast, or at least walkable so you can get out and hike a little.

It's not that kind of tundra I'm talking about. Muskeg is mushy, sometimes wet, but very soft - so much so that it can barely hold up trees (even small ones). The only trees that grow out of it are black or white spruce - trees that even when they're 100 years old are often only 5-10 feet high and never more than a few inches wide. This is why I'd recommend most people *fly* up and then only drive to the good places.

Hello everyone! I got back from Alaska almost 5 days ago now and I'm just getting back to flickr. Had a number of things to get sorted out and quite a few pictures to go through. The road trip was wonderful, but unfortunately the photography wasn't. Put simply, though the golden "hour" in Alaska in June is wonderful (it goes from about 10pm - 6am) it's pretty hard to hit when you're driving for 12 or more hours a day and your place to rest is more than an hour away from any of your shooting spots.

So - between that and the incessant cloudiness of a few days - I didn't come out with a lot of real winners, but I did learn a lot for a return trip (and have tons of recommendations for anyone who wants to go up). I tend to like just being on the road, my companion was one of my best friends (my dad), and the country - despite the light not lending to favorable pictures - was beautiful, so I consider the trip a success.

The above shot was done with a (rented) 14mm sigma (on full frame) held above the car as we sped down the highway. I initially did it just as an experiment, but then when I saw the reflection in the windshield, I ended up taking about 50 of these shots trying to get just the right one.

What more is there to say? Cape Kiwanda is one of my very favorite places in the world: I grew up going there, proposed to my wife there, and have been going there about once per year since I grew up (though it's always been at least 5 hours away). For the first time since I've really gotten into photography, I finally hit it at good "photographic" weather . . the right clouds, the right tide, and I had time to shoot. Had a good time out with Darren White and we finally got a chance to share a few beers at the Pelican Pub.

Will be mostly offline for a while, as I'm getting ready to leave for a week in Canada and Alaska on Saturday . . will have more pictures than I know what to do with. Thanks for stopping by!