Sometimes magic happens and it often does when in Iceland. I sometimes think Iceland was created just for photographers as it is one of the most incredible landscapes in the world and I have seen a lot of them. It was around 10:30 at night and the sun was low on the horizon. We were shooting this really nice lake with dark stones and solid white patches of snow. We then looked far off and saw this rainbow forming. It got larger and larger and brighter too. I put on my long lens with a polarizer and started shooting. Finally I backed off on the zoom a bit and got this image that I really like.
Iceland from the air is an amazing sight. On the helicopter excursions I shot 983 images in less than an hour. This shot was made of one of the river deltas. I love the abstracts you can see from the air.
On our trip last week to Iceland we chartered a helicopter. Iceland from the air is a whole other world. We were able to open the door and the pilot did a great job getting us to the good locations. I think he has done this before. One of the things that becomes obvious quickly is the abstract of the landscape. This is a shot done of a river delta and the muddy waters. without a reference you wouldn’t know what you were looking at. Made with the Nikon D800E with a 24-70mm lens at 1600th of a sec.
I must apologize. No excuses, but I was super busy for the last few months on Luminous-LAndscape business. I literally was running out of hours in a day. So, I am now back and will do my best to get back to the routine of an image a day. Please accept my apologies for the long absence.
I’ll kick off the new images with a shot from last week when I was in Iceland leading workshop. It was a great workshop with some great people. The light lasted 24 hours a day and it was non-stop photography. One morning we woke up and it was grey and cloudy but none the less we headed to the Iceberg Lagoon to shoot sunrise. As it is with Iceland weather the whole grey sky changed in the 10 minute drive there. The clouds started to part and beautiful gold sun started to peak through. This is the shot of an iceberg with the sun common up. Oh my do I love Iceland. Made with a Nikon D800e and a 70-200mm lens.
Iceland is a magical land with so much beauty, that as a photographer it’s hard not to take fantastic images. There are mountains, valleys, seascapes, glaciers, icebergs and the list goes on. What I like is waterfalls. There are hundreds and they are a lot of fun to photograph. There are waterfalls that will astound in you size and the amount of water flowing over them. This waterfall is one I found driving around Iceland and I stop by it each and every time I’m there. I have done panos here, had rain, snow and blue sky. This image is one I like because it has what I call the Iceland Sky. Gray and foreboding. I shot this at a 10th of a second and with a Phase One 28mm lens. Had to go to real low ISO as well as F/22 to get a slow enough shutter to blur the water. Because of the curved element of the lens I couldn’t use a ND filter. I have shot this at longer shutter speeds where the water really blurs and higher where it is frozen. This shutter speed is just right.
I am running a workshop in Iceland next June going places other photo workshops don’t go. If you want a real treat and some incredible images join us. I’ll be doing this workshop with Daniel Bergmann my friend and one of the best landscape photographers I know. Check it out at The Rockhopper Workshops Page.
This is a stairway shooting down from the top floor at the Iceland Hilton Hotel. There is something that just works with the perspective and shadows. Takes a minute to figure out. SSHot with Olympus OMD and 14-54 zoom.
The Black Church, Iceland. Made with a six image stitch and IQ180
This is a famous church in Iceland. Just about every photographer visiting Iceland has photographed this church. So, I try to find something a little bit different. This was made form a six image stitch using long lens. Phase One IQ180.
Iceland is an amazing place to photograph. On my last trip to Iceland in March of 2013 I did a lot of large landscape images and much of it was black and white and stitched images making large panos. These were made with a Phase One IQ180 so I had 80 megapixel images to work with. The detail is amazing in these images. I call the images immersive imaging. What this means at least in my way of thinking is that when I make big print they draw a viewer in. Many times I hang these large 4×9 foot images and watch as someone starts looking at it from 10 feet away. Then something catches their eye and the next thing you know they are a foot away from the images discovering detail like they haven’t seen before in a photograph.
This is an image made deeper into the Icelandic countryside after a climb up a hill. This is a geothermal field where steam just bubbles out of the ground. You can find these all over Iceland. This image doesn’t give a hint on how bad it smells. A very heavy sulfa smell. Es it looks nice against a sunset. Made with a Phase One P65+.
I have always loved this image. A few years ago I was in Iceland and scouting out locations with Daniel Bergman. We traveled to all sorts of cool places and covered a lot of ground. However as usual a number r of my best images came from Jokulsarlon. This is a giant lagoon where glaciers all meet these in turn have ice that brakEs off otherwise known as calving. The light that night was so good. The day really never ended. We had like a three hour sunset that merged into a sunrise. There is a point where these icebergs flow out of the lagoon and to the ocean. The ocean then deposits them on the beach which is another great spot for excellent images. The lagoon got clogged at the point where these icebergs flow out and they created a dam of sorts. Water backed up and then ran over these form their own sets of rapids. I got right up to the spot with a wide angle lens on my Phase One and managed to get these shots. This is one of my favorite.
