Today was one of those gray days you get sometimes in Iceland. Cold, and very strange dull light. In the afternoon though we went to shoot a small glacier bay. I need to get the name of it but it was not as large as some in Iceland. I parked myself at the top of this small overlook and shot a bunch of images. I tried a wide angle and even a long lens. Then I decided to try an 80mm lens and take 6 images and then stitch them together. Bingo, I think it worked. Sometimes when you are out shooting you just have to stay in one place and wait and mess around with things until you nail it.
I always said I wouldn’t post pictures of flowers, cats and myself. I am a rule breaker. Pixel my cat has now graced the blog a few times and now I am going to grace the pages here. This was shot in the same ice cave as the previous image. I did it as a self portrait. Focused set the time and jumped in the shot. How often will I get a photo of me in an ice cave under a glacier? I rest my point.
In addition to the regular PODAS workshops we do we sometimes tag along on some of our instructor workshops and bring along Phase One gear fro attendees to use. I am presently in Iceland with Daniel Bergman, Andy Biggs, and Josh Holka exploring many locations and taking some excellent images. One of my goals on this trip other than sharing our cameras was to text the NEW IQ 260 in long exposure mode as well as to put the new 240mm lens. The lens is incredible and I have been pushing the 260 as hard as I can The IQ260 has the capability to do long exposure. So what better place to take it than deep under a big glacier. The image above was a 4 minute exposure in essentially a dark chamber under a glacier. First the experience of crawling around in a glacier is a bit unnerving to say the least. Then you stumble upon this beautiful icicle that had to be 12 feet in the air. You set the camera up in darkness, shine your headlamp onto the icicle to focus and try an exposure. Turns out the exposure was 4 minutes at f-16. It was amazing to see what the sensor saw that we didn’t. The bottom part of the image was pulled from shadow area that on initial viewing was all black. We did a bit of saturation and some highlight recovery. I think the 240 did a good job. If I had a bit more time I may have tried a 6-8 minute exposure and tried to pull the histogram a bit more to the right.
This is the famous Black Church in Iceland. Very iconic and everyone that visits Iceland photographs this church. I tried to do something different. Using a Phase One camera with a 240mm lens on it I shot from a distance and did 3 exposures and then combined them into a pano. I used the long lens to compress the background and to give a big feel to the mountains behind the church.
We moved a bit further North this afternoon and spent sunset at a frozen Waterfall. This was shot with a Phase ONe IQ260 and made from 4 images through a 240mm lens. I am trying to do long lens shots to see Iceland differently when I can.
I am off to 10 days of shooting in Iceland in the winter. Yes there is ice in Iceland. Our first stop was a set of waterfalls that just come out of the earth. Very beautiful and quite long. I have a few keepers from this stop and shoot but this is one of my favorites. On a trip like this I’ll take thousands of images. So, I’ll do quick edits while in Iceland and on the trip and I’ll try to post everyday if I have good internet. So, keep checking back. I believe this is the Hraunfossar falls.
