Portland and Seattle in 5 minutes and 11 seconds

Over the summer I had the opportunity to travel to two new states: Oregon and Washington. Portland and Seattle had been on my bucket list for the last few years, and this year I made the commitment to spend a couple of days in each city.

I was 99 percent sure I was going to fall in love with Portland, but I surprisingly ended up more fond of Seattle. Still, I wouldn’t mind returning to either place. If I ever get to visit Portland again, I’m going to spend more time exploring the Columbia River Gorge.

Anyway, my trips are almost always never short of extensive visual documentation, and Portland and Seattle were no exception. Whenever I hop on a bus, train, airplane, or long car ride, I always have my camera with me so I can snap hundreds and hundreds of photos. I do this primarily to create content for my travel blog, Backyard Destinations. But honestly, even if that blog didn’t exist, I would be photographing all day anyway. It’s something I’ve done for fun since I was 12.

While I was exploring the Pacific Northwest, I also dedicated some time to recording footage of these two popular cities so I could put together a couple of videos. When I was in high school, I took a video productions class and learned that I liked editing videos as well. So I’ve started making it a point to - in addition to taking photos - record video, too, to vary up the documentation.

Here are the highlights I put together shortly after the trips concluded. Kindly excuse the shaky footage. I recorded everything handheld.

Big shoutout to @erronious1 for working with me to come up with music for these videos!

(P.S. I’m scouting around for a durable, reliable, tripod that will fit into a 22L pack. Let me know if you have any suggestions!)