Posts by Ed Leckert

One of my faithful readers recently commented that she found it interesting that I could keep track of all the crazy (to us) Icelandic names of locations where my recent images were taken. Actually, that's a very good point. I mean, keeping track of details on a shoot is hard enough anyway, but shooting in places with names like Ingjaldshólskirkja on the Snæfellsnes [ˈstn̥aiːfɛlsˌnɛːs] peninsula makes it even more difficult.

Believe it or not, another year has gone by, and it's time again for the...wait for it...2nd Annual Rogue Christmas BeerZaar at the Issaquah Brewhouse! This is your opportunity to come out and have a pint or two while shopping for great Christmas gifts hand crafted by local artists and craftsmen-persons.

Tucked in between Black Friday, which we celebrate by camping out in front of Best Buy and Wal-Mart so we can be the first in line to knock down grandma over the latest junk no one needs, and Cyber Monday, where we spend the day at work surfing the Internet for deals on the latest junk no one needs, is a very important recent addition that is quickly gaining popularity called Small Business Saturday®.

Well, it has some ice, too. In fact it has lots of ice, much of it in the form of glaciers on top of some rather active volcanoes. But it also has plenty of rivers and lakes and waterfalls and sandy beaches. And, of course, being an island it has lots of coastline, as you might expect. Because of its many fjords, though, it has a lot more coast than you would think.

While preparing for my recent photo trip to Iceland, I studied various travel guides as well as a detailed, foldout map the country, and one item that kept popping up was the little churches that seem to be sprinkled all over the country. I kept coming across photos of these cute little white churches with red roofs, the guide books mentioned them in just about every town, and the map even showed the location of every single church. So I knew I had to visit some of these for myself and see what they were all about.

Blonds, brunettes, and red heads, bangs, bobs and you name it, these pretty babes are all about the hair! Of course I'm talking about Icelandic Horses. And don't call them ponies around a Viking if you know what's good for you!

Well, we're right in the middle of it out here in the Pacific Northwest - fall, that is! Some of the trees still have lots of green on them, while others are about done (especially in the mountains), but there are loads of trees at their peak all around the Seattle area. And they're beautiful!

Thirty miles to the south of Seattle in the city of Tacoma, right outside the Museum of Glass, there is a 500-foot-long pedestrian overpass that crosses I-705 and some railroad tracks. This curious footbridge connects the Museum of Glass to the rest of the Tacoma Museum District, the University of Washington Tacoma, and a few hundred Starbucks locations. But in addition to its function as a footbridge, it is a bit of a museum itself, for it is known as the Chihuly Bridge of Glass.

Everybody loves reflections! What is it about reflections that gets people so excited? Of all the types of nature photography out there, it seems like reflections get the biggest reaction.

In the nearly infinite bucket list of places I want to visit and photograph, the desert Southwest has always ranked high on my list. I mean, how can you beat a place that has beautiful red rock formations, sand dunes, slot canyons, exotic desert plants, flash floods, poisonous snakes, deadly scorpions, and big hairy scary tarantulas? This is a place that has it all! So when my friend Jeremy invited me to join him on a trip he was organizing last Spring, I jumped at the chance!

Just in time for Christmas, the print store is open for business! OK, maybe I'm jumping the gun a little bit, but now when folks ask if they can order prints directly from my website, I can say "But, of course!".

One of my favorite types of photography that I don't do enough of is abstracts. Webster defines an abstract of the art variety as "expressing ideas and emotions by using elements such as colors and lines without attempting to create a realistic picture". I define it as "if it's in focus and you still can't tell what it is, it's an abstract".

Fall is in the air! Can you feel it? I know, I know, summers are short enough in Seattle, so why get excited about the beginnings of another dreary, cloudy, rainy, nine month long winter, right? Well, it just so happens that autumn is, to many photographers anyway, the most photogenic of the seasons. The bugs are gone, the heat and temperature inversions have moved on, and what's left is fresh, clean air and, depending on where you are, some pretty amazing colors!

Back in 2009 I signed up for an evening photo shoot called "Neon Lights Reflections" with the Mountaineers Photography group. The idea was to "create colorful abstract images of neon lights reflected in puddles and pools". These activities are posted on the website several weeks prior to the date of the event, but somehow the leader had an idea the streets might be wet on the date of the outing in Seattle in February. And of course they were.

The last couple of weeks I've been talking about some of the unique features found near the eastern edge of Yosemite National Park in California. There's one more gem in this part of the world that I have to talk about, and then I promise I'll move on. So how about a ghost town?

Sometimes the most interesting things are found on the way to something else. That's how it is with the tufa towers at Mono Lake.

If you ever decide to go to Yosemite National Park in August, I have one piece of advice for you: DON'T DO IT! If you're there already, I'm sorry. OK, I'm being melodramatic to make a point. Yosemite Valley, even at 4,000 feet elevation, is hot in the summer. And besides that, it's full of tourists. Not that there's anything wrong...oh, heck, I'm repeating myself. I covered all that in Ghosts of Hikers Past. But I didn't tell you what I actually did instead of going to the valley.

Last weekend I went on a hike with the Seattle Mountaineers to a place called the Kendall Katwalk - an amazing section of the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) that was blasted out of a tall cliff face of solid granite so the trail could continue past an area that would otherwise have been, well, let's just say a bit of a challenge to pass. (Read that as impossible to pass without serious climbing gear.) So this week we're going to talk about - you guessed it - something else! Throughout that hike we heard the frequent warning calls of pikas (to pronounce this, think "bikers" with a Jersey accent), and so I thought I'd spend a couple of minutes talking about these cute little guys.

Occasionally I will enter a photo contest if the rules, entry fees, and prizes are reasonable, and so today I received an email from the International Mountain Summit team informing me that one of my images had been selected as one of the best 100 photos of the IMS Photo Contest 2013 with the theme "Mountain Lights and Shadows". Well, I suppose that's not a bad way to start a Monday!

My images officially have a new home! The owners of Trattoria Amante Issaquah Pizza and Pasta have graciously offered me space to show my images on the walls of their beautiful restaurant. My display is located at the front entrance and consists of approximately sixteen framed prints of various sizes. If you live in the area, come by any time and take a look! The images will rotate periodically and will be on display throughout the summer and fall.