This shot is not actually taken from the side of the road, but I did see it while driving. After seeing it I had the always fun adventure of trying to find a place to pull off the road, never an easy thing in Iceland. Then I had to hike back the kilometre or so to get back to the right angle…
This shot is actually taken from the top of a pile of rocks in a cow paddock. I’ve tried reversing the usual very saturated Icelandic landscape and pulled most of the colour out of the image to really concentrate the eye on the stark white of the little church. I do wonder why God would want to live in a little house like this when he can build the majestic landscape you see behind it. Perhaps to get out of the ever present Icelandic rain?
Shot on the Hasselblad H4D-60 and the 100mm f2.2 lens from on top of a rock pile in a cow paddock. How mundane.
Iceland Tour 4/12’s full.
Only 8 places left for my Iceland Tour next August, you can read about it here>>>
After many weeks of promising I have finally got all the details up on the webpage for my Photographic Tour to Iceland for August 2015! Its just in time for Christmas for that special someone, or yourself. I think its important to buy yourself a special present at Christmas too, after all, nobody knows what you really want as well as you do right? If you love photography, then this is the present you want.
Iceland Photo Tour details are up.
We will beginning the tour in Iceland in Reykjavik August 19th 2015 and concluding the tour there August 30th. It’s 12 days total, with 10 full days on tour (with a day either side for arrival and departure), with all your ground costs covered while you are on tour, including all your meals. The only thing you have as extras are alcohol and any other extra curricular snacks you may hide in your camera bag. All the details are on the web page, including the booking forms simply click HERE>
Small group with 12 places only.
This tour I am running in partnership with Iurie Belegurschi, a very well known and talented Icelandic photographer. We have a maximum of 12 places available for this tour and a big bus to drive us around, so there is loads of space for all that camera gear and luggage. Have a look at the webpage, and if you have any questions give me a call on +61 415 854 179 or email at am@adammonk.com
These images of Gullfoss at sunset were shot on the Hasselblad H4D-60 with the 50mm f3.5 lens (above) and the 100mm f2.2 lens (below).
I’m not really doing this in order, at least not chronological order but rather just the images that take my fancy as I troll through my Iceland photos. So these shots are from the day before the last post when I had spent the morning photographing the sunrise over the Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon with the Vatnajökull Glacier in the background. It was a clear bright day with no wind, one of the very few like that on the whole journey. I’m not really a fan of clear bright days, at least not for dramatic photography, and the awe inspiring landscapes of Iceland are truly made for dramatic photography, especially with wild cloudy windswept skies; Which is what I got for almost all of the trip.
Clear sunny days are great for relaxing in the sun (especially when its 2 degrees), drinking a coffee at a roadside cafe (or a Glacier side cafe in this case), and going down and photographing the backlit icebergs on the black sand beach at the entrance to the Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon. Extreme close up, abstract backlit icebergs. Lots of fun, and a magical place just to wander around and play on a sunny day. I began with a wool undershirt, a fleece jacket, a Canada Goose down jacket, scarf, gloves and beanie, it’s right next to a Glacier remember. After about a half hour I was down to the wool undershirt, and carrying all the rest strapped to my camera bag! That black volcanic sand really absorbs the warmth of the sun, and with no wind it pretty soon got up to the mid 20’s, even with Icebergs all over the place.
Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon and the Black sand beaches at the outlet to the sea are truly unique and amazing places, which is why we will be spending nearly 3 days there in my up coming Photographic Tour to Iceland, for which details will be up very very soon…
These Images shot on the Hasselblad H4D-60 with the 100mm f2.2 lens at f20.
The last morning of my 10 day Iceland trip I had put aside for the black sand Ice beach at Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon in the Vatnajökull National Park, in Southern Iceland. It had been clear the day before (and I got the Northern Lights the night before), but on the last morning there was no actual sunrise, the dawning of the day was heralded only by a lightening of the shades of grey in the sky. So I stayed in bed in my camper van, being utterly exhausted after 10 days of chasing light. I got up around 8am, which was a huge sleep in, had a leisurely cup of tea, then wandered down to the beach where everything had brightened up considerably, and there was even a little late colour in the sky. Sometimes sleeping in pays off.
The icebergs that break off the Vatnajökull Glacier into the lagoon slowly make their way down the outlet to the sea. Many of the bigger icebergs get jammed in the shallow channel, and then get pushed back in again with the tide, and so go back and forth a couple of times daily until they melt enough to float freely out to sea. Even then their trial is not over, as many of them get washed up on the volcanic black sand beach either side of the outlet, at least for a while. There were some huge icebergs there the day before, high and dry and looking like they would never move, the next day they were gone to be replaced by others.
Date Change for Iceland Photo Tour 2015.
We have had a slight date change for next years photographic tour of Iceland. Rather than beginning August 25th as originally planned, we are now booked for August 19th – August 30th 2015. We had a hotel booking conflict that was easier to resolve by changing dates, so thats what we have done. I have all the info now, itinerary, dates, costings ect… Now I just have to write the web page…
Yet another image shot after pulling the van over to the side of road in Iceland whilst on the way to some where else. Yet another unscheduled stop in a landscape that is almost inconceivably beautiful.
My biggest problem in Iceland was finding places where I could pull over… The roads are all built up quite high above the landscape, I guess they get a lot of flooding there, and there is no road shoulder so no room to pull over. So every 5 minutes when I went driving past something spectacular my biggest concern was finding somewhere to pull over without going off the side of the road into the landscape.
So, just another magic spot somewhere off the road in Southern Iceland.
Shot on the Hasselblad H4d-60 and the 28mm lens, with a 6 stop ND filter. Needs a bit of pst processing work, but I think it has potential…
Iceland Photo Tour Update.
I have the itinerary finalised for the August 2015 tour of Iceland, now I just have to get all the hotels confirmed to finalise costing and then we are ready to start booking. More news soon.
The second night at Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon I got another opportunity to see some more Aurora Borealis over the Vatnajökull Glacier, twice in a row after no clear nights on the rest of the trip. This evening I had moved around and set up camp on the side of the Glacier Lake to get a different perspective and I was completely by myself in the erie silence, not even a breath of wind. It was almost a religious experience!
Both these images shot on the Sony A7-r and the Canon 24mm f1.4L lens & lens adaptor. I experimented a bit with exposure and found that on that camera ISO 800 was preferable at about f2.8 and 10-15 seconds exposure… But I had a nearly full moon to light the Glacier and the Icebergs. On a moonless night you will need much more exposure to get the scene visible and not just the Northern Lights in the sky. ISO 1250 allowed me more depth of Field at f4 or even f5.6, but it was too noisy, especially in the reflections.
Iceland Photo Tour August 2015.
I’m getting closer to having al the details finalised for my Photographic tour to Iceland in August 2015, I’m hoping to have all details up and be accepting bookings in a week or so. I will be running this tour with well known Icelandic photographer Iurie Belegurschi (more about him later) so will be increasing the numbers slightly to a maximum of 12 people. I already have several people on the waiting list for this tour, If you would like to be on it to click HERE to go to the page to send me an email.
I think I need to put some Ice in Iceland, so far all my Iceland images have been showing verdant green, but no Ice. Yes there is ice in Iceland, and in fact Iceland is home to some of Europe’s biggest glaciers and they cover about 11% of Iceland’s land area.
Often glaciers form lakes and at their foot as the glacier melts… No, that can’t be right, Tony Abbott says global warming is a myth, the glaciers are not melting!
Vatnajökull Glacier
Jokulsarlon is particularly beautiful glacier lake at the foot of the Vatnajökull Glacier on the South coast of Iceland. And first thing in the morning, it looks like this…
This image shot at dawn on the Hasselblad H4D-60 and the 100mm f2.2
Still avoiding waterfalls for now, I thought I would post some more shots from the side of the road on my road trip around Iceland. This one shot just a few minutes before the previous post “Epic Icelandic Landscape with Church” as I was descending out of the hills and the Eastern Fjords of Iceland onto the South Coast region.
The mountains in the Eastern Fjord region are stunning, at least the bits I could see. But as I had been driving through pea soup dense fog for about 40 minutes I was missing most of it. To make it even more fun it was an amazingly windy road. As I descended out of the mountains the mist cleared giving me a spectacular view over a primordial landscape of mountains, mossy lava fields and boiling skies… That is not this photo.
Unfortunately some idiot in an F250 truck was trying to shove his bumper up my exhaust pipe at this stage and there was nowhere to stop, so I had to wait until I was at the bottom of the very steep descent where the overly hormoned driver could pass me and I could pull over. So same valley, just a different viewpoint. I’ll get the other viewpoint next time, which will be next August 2015.
Image shot with the Hasselblad H4D-60 and 50mm f3.4 lens.
Looking back on the last few posts of Iceland it looks like Iceland is just a land of waterfalls. Not that that’s bad, but it’s only a fraction of the story… I do have many more shots of waterfalls to go yet! So just for a change, here is a shot without a waterfall visible. Instead I have a tiny Icelandic Church, and a whole bunch of mountains. I love these wild cloudy skies, so much more spectacular than endless blue. Some days in Iceland the cloudy skies were so amazing I went out and just took photos of clouds… Just clouds.
Click on the image to get a bigger version and see the church… or you can look at the zoomed crop below. There are advantages to having 60 Mega pixels to play with.
This image was shot on the Hasselblad H4D-60 with the 100mm f2.2 lens.
Land of Ice and Fire Photographic Tour 2015
If you would like to see Iceland up close and personal, I am running a photographic tour there next year for 10 days beginning August 25th. I’m still working out the final details of the itinerary and costings, but all the details will be on my Iceland Photo Tour Page as soon as it’s all finalised. From that page you can also send me a quick email if you would like to go on the mailing list for early warning.
Godafoss waterfall in Iceland is a pretty special place, so I stayed there for a sunset and a sunrise and shot it from both sides. At least somewhere above the clouds there was a sunset and a sunrise. Fortunately overcast light works really well for waterfalls, so although it seems like it I am not really complaining. The clouds were beautifully defined with lots of great heavy texture, I even got some colour in the clouds above the falls for this shot. This is pretty much the raw capture with a few minutes of tweaking in Lightroom, mostly just contrast and white balance. I think this one will come up nicely with a little bit of digital magic.
To shoot images of Godafoss waterfall you can choose from both sides of the falls, and many different High and low perspectives. This is the low down perspective shot right on the water level. There was water spray everywhere, so it was wipe and shoot again.
Shot on the Hasselblad H4D-60 with the 28mm lens. Don’t forget to click on the image to get a bigger version.
