Eagles View Bed and Breakfast

Eagles View Bed and Breakfast

The Guest House Bed and Breakfast

Guest House Bed and Breakfast Room

Mildreds Bed and Breakfast

Mildreds Bed and Breakfast

Shafer Baillie Mansion

Shafer Baillie Mansion

Inn of Twin Gables

Inn of Twin Gables

9 Cranes Inn

9 Cranes Inn

Three Tree Point

Three Tree Point

Sleeping Bulldog Bed and Breakfast

Sleeping Bulldog Bed and Breakfast

Seattle Hill House

Seattle Hill House B and B

Bacon Mansion

Bacon Mansion

Greenlake Guesthouse

Greenlake Guest House

You can see more properties in the area at the Seattle Bed and Breakfast Association website.

We are adding a new tour for the 2012 season. Our signature Snoqualmie Falls tour has been well received and last year was our most popular tour. This year we are adding a second tour to the falls, which we call a “Quick Tour”. This is designed for those that have a limited time in Seattle or who need to get to the cruise ship terminal before their ship leaves. With our luggage area on our tour bus, we can pick you up at your hotel in the morning and have you to your cruise ship by 2:30 PM.

Here is a description of our tour and we are excited to be adding another great Seattle tour this year.

“Our tour pickup begins at the Pike Place Market at 10 AM. Before we get on the bus, we’ll show you a few points of interest in the Pike Place market including the infamous Gum Wall as seen in National Geographic Magazine and rated the second germiest place on earth next to the Blarney Stone. We’ll teach you a few photo tips to help you get the best photos in preparation for our trip.

Pioneer Square is our first bus stop as you explorer the second oldest neighborhood in Seattle with hidden treasures including 19th century brick buildings, outdoor native art and a hidden Zen-like area with a 22 foot waterfall.

Our journey then begins to Snoqualmie falls where there are many sights to see along the way. We make our way past the downtown area where you can get views of the skyline including stadiums, maritime traffic and views of the Olympic Mountains. We then cross the second longest floating bridge on Earth at 6,620 ft. on our way to the Cascade Mountain foothills.

Your first experience in the Cascade foothills will include a train museum and the town of Snoqualmie, founded in the 1850′s and the real “Twin Peaks” of the Pacific Northwest. At the historic Snoqualmie train depot you will get close to many full-size antique railcars and locomotives and have adequate time to explore all the museum has to offer.

Snoqulamie Falls is next with its picturesque viewpoint and world famous Salish Lodge. Here you enjoy the mountain air and beauty of the Cascade Range foothills with native trees and easy to navigate pathways at the two-acre park. You’ll also find a gift shop and observation deck for an unobstructed view of the famous 270 foot waterfall. This is a perfect place to bring a picnic lunch with covered areas available should it rain.

We then make our way back to Seattle where you end the tour at the Pike Place Market at 2 PM.

This tour is designed for those who don’t have a full day available to take our combined Snoqualmie Falls and City Tour.”

Photographers can be hard to buy for during the holidays. We love to geek out on cool lenses, filters and Photoshop toys but these gifts are things we would probably never think of buying. You don’t have to be a photography aficionado to wow your photographer gift recipient with these ten great gift ideas.

Camera Lens Mug

I have two of these and love how people freak out when I take this into Starbucks to get a refill. For $30 Photo JoJo provides a great quality mug and thermos that would be number one on my list for gift giving.

Black Rapid Camera Strap

I love the Black rapid Camera strap it allows your camera to hang at your hip and stay out of the way. Especially when walking on trails or when shooting concerts, this is one product I wouldn’t be without in my photo arsenal. Available on Amazon for less than $60.

F-Stop Watch

Another great product from Photo JoJo for less than $40 is this F-Stop watch.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 10

Adobe has a scaled down version of Photoshop with Photoshop Elements 10 that makes a great starting point for budding photographers. Not as feature rich as the full blown version of Photoshop, but it will do almost as much with the tools for a price of less than $50 on Amazon.

Holga Lens for Nikon and Canon

Holga’s are little plastic film cameras that create dreamy images with their cheap lenses. Now available for SLR cameras, you can buy just the lens for both Canon and Nikon cameras on Ebay. At less than $20 these are a great gift that every photographer is going to love.

Pet’s Eye View Camera

This is a fun camera to play with. You can set this to an auto interval setting of 1, 5 or 15 minutes with a storage capacity of 40 images and capture your pets view of the world. Available on Amazon for less than $40.

Faces of a Vanishing World

This is one of the best photography documentries I have seen. Joey Lawrence who has become one of the most accomplished photographers of our time set out into the Omo Valley of Ethiopia to take portraits. The documentary follows Joey from his preparation for the trip in New York, to the journey of making his way to the Omo Valley. A year later he brings prints of the images back to the tribes people who have probably never seen themselves in a photograph.

You can purchase this via Joey’s website for only $25.

PDN Magazine

The premier photography magazine for professional photographer is PDN Magazine. Giving a gift subscription would make a welcome gift to those who are serious about making money in photography.

Photo Jojo Book

Buy the Photojojo! The Book at the Photojojo Store!

A $1,000 Gift card to B and H Photo

Ok, we can dream here, but B and H Photo Video is the center of the universe for photographers and a gift card from them makes the perfect gift. Purchase your gift cards online at Bhphotovideo.com

Thanks to all of our customer who continue to share their experiences with Tripadvisor.com. We have reached a  #3 ranking of 59 tours in Seattle.

Below is an image that was taken at 1/6 of a second to get the silky smooth look to the water.

See more photos on his website of the fall colors.

The salmon are now spawning and using the fish ladder at the locks. The Sea Lion’s know they are easy prey and have a feast at the entrance to the fish ladder. In a period of about 2-3 minutes, this Sea Lion grabbed about 20 salmon and ate the center and then discarded the rest.

This was a great day to not only see the Sea Lions, but also the spawning salmon as they go through the viewing areas of the locks.

And of course there are a few that get away from the Sea Lions and make it through the ladder.

Additional photos taken during and after our tour on September 3rd.

Sunday on our final stop on our Snoqualmie driving tour, we ran across Ray Meuse who had set up his 8×10 large format camera to shoot the Seattle Skyline. His camera is a hybrid of pieces he built on his own. The lens is from an aerial photography camera with an aperture of f/6. He also designed his own shutter mechanism. You never know what great things you’ll see on our tours.

You can Ray’s images at http://raymeusephotography.com​/

By: Shutter Tours Photo Guide Valentina Vitols.

You’ve heard the news. Shutter Tours went shopping and came back with a brand spanking new van!  Two new driving tours have been added to our offer and our staff can barely contain the excitement we feel about leading our tour participants around town and beyond. Being photography our focus, I can assure you there will be countless photo opportunities to take advantage of.

Our Snoqualmie Falls Driving Tour route includes the Cascade foothills, a train museum with full-size trains—perfect to practice line, shape and form and photographing textures—, Snoqualmie Falls and the town of Snoqualmie, the real “Twin Peaks” of the Pacific Northwest. There will be plenty of breathtaking landscapes you can point your lens at.

During our lunch break, keep your camera on! The palatable and beautiful food from Pike Place Market we bring along is worth a snap or two. We will also visit the stunning Japanese Gardens at the Washington Park Arboretum and, if we are lucky, we will be able to take photos of the turtles.

Afterward, we will continue to the Fremont Troll, the Ballard Locks and its famous Fish Ladder and a little surprise. Then, we will head back to Pike Place Market to wrap up our photographic journey.

Take a look at some of the images I shot when we first explored the route. These are some of the visual treats you can look forward to encountering.

Visiting Seattle and want to polish your photographic skills? Longing for an entertaining “staycation” escapade with your camera in hand? Join us for an incredible scenic adventure that combines the best of rural and urban vistas.

Book your tour today!

First off was a trip to West Seattle.  With lots of boats and sunshine, the view of the city was spectacular.

A current item of interest on this tour is the sea based x-band radar currently being refurbished at Vigor Shipyards under a $27 million Boeing contract.  The platform is designed to roam the Pacific Ocean to help detect incoming ballistic missiles.  At a height of 280′, it stands out like a big baseball on the waterfront.  The radar is able to track an object the size of a baseball over San Francisco in California from the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia, approximately 2,900 miles away.

The locks were on the tour this sunny day and wow were the boats out!  Our tour participants from Japan and Korea thought this was a great sight to see.  Amy from Korea also commented on how nice it was to see the sky.  Living in Seoul, she says the sky is usually obscured by the tall buildings and she enjoyed the open feeling of Seattle.

We love showing people the Fremont Troll and these ladies from Seattle, New Jersey and the Philippines were happy to pose in front of the 18′ sculpture.

Want to see these locations on your visit to Seattle?

Book your tour today.

From the very beginning of our company, it has been our mission to provide the best experience for our customers when they visit Seattle.   Our signature walking tour has received rave reviews on Tripadvisor.com, been written about in local and national press and even been featured on TV with Seattle’s Evening Magazine and MyFox.

We knew we had to expand and provide an even greater experience by providing a driving tour.  This week we picked up our brand new 14 passenger shuttle bus from the dealer. We are all thrilled that we will be able to offer some exciting new tours that we have have been working on in anticipation of this purchase.  During the past two months we have created two new tours – our City Tour that gives you picturesque views of the city, and an extended tour to Snoqualmie Falls and other wonderful locations in the area.  There are many more tours on the horizon and we can now customize tours to take our tour participants to the locations they want to see most.  Please email us with any tours you would like to see on our schedule at info@shuttertours.com.