Author: Emily Ludolph / Source: 99U by Behance
For a skier and adventure photographer drawn to dramatic, pristine landscapes, the state of Washington is a natural fit.
The words of photographer Scott Rinckenberger as told to Lauren Covello Jacobs.
The Pacific Northwest is unlike most anywhere in the country in that it has every type of landscape you can interact with.
Within a couple of hours of Seattle, you’ve got a wild, rugged coastline where you can surf or kayak. Go the other direction and you’ve got giant, glaciated mountains that are often compared with the Alps. A little further east you’ve got desert environments, rain forests. There are just endless ecosystems in which to explore.I grew up in a rural, woodsy part of Washington, and my childhood was very much about being outdoors. My friends and I weren’t “sit inside and play video games” kids. We were into getting on our bikes and finding a new spot to make a jump, finding a new creek to swim in, catching lizards.
Throughout my childhood and into college, I was really obsessed with skiing. It was sort of my driving passion. By the time I was college age, I had devoted enough time and energy to it that I was one of the better skiers around in my age group. That morphed into a semi-pro ski career that had me traveling all over the U.S., Europe, and South America. I skied professionally from when I was in college at the University of Washington until my late twenties.
I’m still a passionate and involved skier, and that’s a lot of what I bring to my photography.
For me, skiing was as much a creative pursuit as it was an athletic one. I say “was” only to compartmentalize it; I’m still a passionate and involved skier, and that’s a lot of what I bring to my photography. But there definitely came a time when I needed a new creative stimulus to keep my mind sharp and engaged. I didn’t want to continue to relive the same year over and over. I needed some new input, and photography offered that.
So in the second half of my twenties, I started self-educating in photography and looking for jobs assisting other photographers. At around 27 or 28, I ended up landing a full-time job working for a photographer named Chase Jarvis. That became my real foray into photography as a career.
From there, I began developing an eye for these wilderness winter landscapes and creating imagery that I wasn’t really seeing anywhere else.
On weekends, I’d be out…
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