The Europe Experience
While I’m stuck on traveling, I thought I’d finally post about one of my favorite trips ever, an impromptu trip to France and Switzerland.
Seattle & a Free Mind
Life has been a bit of a whirl these days. After a pandemic unlike anything seen before on my years of walking on this planet, I’ve successfully unglued my face to the flickering of the news and am seeing more light at the end of the tunnel.
All time time quarantined has really put me in the mindset of wanting to get out and see the world again in a fresh light. Since staying away from people cuts off most of my favorite travel ideas, I thought it would be a good time to jump into my travel time machine and go back to one of my favorite trips of 2019, in the beautiful Emerald City of Seattle.
My talented sister lives there so I did a bunch of traveling with her and then I also did a bit of solo traveling and visiting some good people.
A Glance at 2018
A lot can happen in a year. This year was rather exciting for me. A few of my highlights included moving to Little Rock, meeting and photographing a lot of wonderful people, shooting a wedding in Iceland, and some other things that I can only tease about for now. :) I tend to always look on the bright side of things, but looking back at these favorite photos from 2018, I can’t help but feel blessed.
Thanks for being here and following along! Cheers to another amazing year. :)
Top 5+ Iceland/Reyjkavic Day Trip Destinations
This Fall I traveled to Iceland for a wedding (Ellis & Kristen) and it was one of my favorite trips ever. It’s such a beautiful country that while small enough to feel familiar after a few days, can’t be fully experienced in the short week that we were there. We were able to pack in a lot of beautiful places in the few days that we had free after the wedding, and I’m happy with our itinerary enough to highly recommend these if you’re making the trip.
In no particular order, these are my favorite Iceland destinations. Drumroll please…
- Glymur — possibly my favorite hike of all time. We took the lower trail up the ravine, crossed the stream and then hiked back down on the other side. I’d recommend doing the same. A bunch of the pictures from the blog post were from this hike. Not the most novice level hike (crossing the stream was slightly scary) but most definitely worth it. (IG photo)
- Gljúfrabúi — little cave waterfall by the more iconic Seljalandsfoss. Definitely check them both out. I enjoyed all the more popular touristy waterfalls, but this small waterfall in a cave was much more secluded than the rest. (IG photo and story)
- Black Beach near Vic — this place can get rather busy, but it’s definitely worth the trip east from Reyjkavic.
- Geothermal pools at Hverasvaedid — self expalatory. Long-ish hike, but amazing and a neat experience. (map to it)
We also did the golden circle and a bunch of smaller destinations. I found this map to be very informative for finding good destinations. Some bonus items that didn’t make the list would be one of the islands nearby (that I didn’t have time for) that you can travel to by ferry or plane. Also the fish and chips stand by Skogafoss is worth a stop. :)
All in all, wonderful place. Highly recommend going when you can! A++ Enjoy the photos. :)
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- No sheep is safe.
2017 Year in Review
Today I’m going to take you on a journey through the stories and lives that I’ve been able to be a part of this past year. What is always my favorite part of photography (or film or any media that touches into storytelling) is being able to almost physically touch a moment after it has passed. Sometimes we don’t know why we feel a certain way, why we love, or what draws us to certain people…yet photography can put a few pieces together to bring some of that back to tangible.
In reliving 2017, I think back through all the wonderful memories I’ve had both with the wonderful people that I’ve been able to work with, family, and friends. So I’m going to put both personal and client work all together. :)
This year I was fortunate enough to travel to Europe with my mom to visit my sister and to explore. We started in Lyon, France, drove to Switzerland, swung by Italy, and then back to France again. I plan to blog about this adventure soon-ish. Another favorite little trip was meeting up with some friends along the border of Illinois and Kentucky to watch the solar eclipse. I also became an uncle and took a trip to the smoky mountains with my family.
One of the greatest blessings in life is being surrounded by wonderful people. For that I’m very thankful. :) Hope you enjoy the photos! Thanks for following and/or being a part of this.
North Carolina Adventure
This is a tale of the Yoder family’s 2017 adventures in the North Carolina Smoky Mountains. I adore my family and treasure any time that I’m able to spend with them. :) This year we stayed at a more secluded cabin than our previous time in the Smokys, so we had had fewer destinations, but stuck with a favorite swimming spot, favorite hiking/mountain spot (Max Patch on the Appalachian trail), playing games and hanging out at the cabin (hammock game strong), and more movie nights (with the Secret Life of Walter Mitty now a family vacation movie necessity).
Here are some of my favorite people. It’s my family–plus one & minus one. Enjoy the photos! :)
Behind the Scenes: USB Drives
Switching it up a bit today with showing off some of the newest goodies to reach the office–it’s the USB flash drives that I send to my lovely clients! The lovely folks at USB Memory Direct reached out to me to see if I’d like to to get some samples of the USB drives that they make (ummm, yes!), and I’m happy with how they turned out!
I went with the natural wood look for its simplicity and clean look. So fresh. Check them out if you’re in the business for custom drives like this. :)
2016 Year In Review
I always enjoy a good reminiscing session.
A time to create your sci-fi time machine that you might have fantasized about inventing. A time to flip that mental nostalgia switch and put yourself back into some glorious previously experienced stories. This is kinda like that, except this time around, the stories are from my time machine. :)
Let’s travel back to the year 2016. A year many had a lot of negative feelings attached to it. But in this nostalgia-session, you anything dark. You’ll find a collection of some of the most joyful moments I’ve been blessed to be a part of. You’ll find quiet moments, happy times, anticipation, and delight. Also you’ll find my cat. You’ll find some of my favorite non-cats that I’ve been able to work with–some of the best people around. People who are making the world a better place.
This is a mixture of personal adventures, details, engagement sessions, and weddings, organized in a very purposeful way that I can’t quite explain. I hope you enjoy this look back this past year through my various digital lenses.
Good times.
For more time machine posts, here are my previous years in review: 2015, 2014a, 2014b, 2013
Thanks as always for following along and for the words of encouragement. It means a whole lot. <3
New England Adventures
Throughout college I’ve been able to do a lot of exploring around here. I feel pretty familiar with the South now, having now been to most of Arkansas and all the surrounding states. I’ve done a fair bit of road trips too, but the large majority have started in Searcy.
I don’t think this is out of the ordinary considering that I’ve lived in Arkansas for the last ~8 years, but I’ve recently had the realization that I’ve seen a lot of the South but haven’t even been to a lot of the states around Pennsylvania where I grew up. So I decided to change that.
Thanksgiving always brings me home to Pennsylvania, so I decided to use that to jumpstart my bucket list trip of exploring the far northeast of the US. Big thanks to my cousin Ethan for joining and my Canadian friend Jon for loaning me a his car and camping trailer which made the chilly nights far more survivable. It rained a good part of the week, so tent camping would have been dreadful. Ok…on to the trip!
Destinations of our trip included visiting:
- Scranton Pennsylvania (looking for The Office memorabilia, failing)
- My good friend Meg in Connecticut
- Providence, Rhode Island
- Portland, Maine (Two Lights State Park and Crescent Beach State Park)
- Popham Beach State Park
- Boothbay Harbor
- Acadia National Park
- Conway, New Hampshire (Cathedral Ledge State Park & Diana’s Baths)
- Crawford Notch State Park (where we just stopped along the road because of the snow. :) The mountains between NH and VT were so pretty)
Then back to Pennsylvania via New York. Then back to Arkansas. All in all, I put around 4,000 driving miles in those two weeks. :) It made me avoid cars for a little while after that, but was definitely worth it.
Going in the vacation off season was kind of nice for all the empty (or in many cases closed) parks and the expanse of nature and ocean coastline to ourselves, but I still would like to go again during the peak Fall season to see all the colors that the New England states are famous for. But that will be for another year. :)
Enjoy the brief look into my far northeast adventures!
