iceland – Dutch goes the Photo!

A Tale of Two Seasons

Two aspects of the magnificent Skogafoss waterfall, each majestic in its own essence.

Prior to my February journey to Iceland I had visited the land of Fire & Ice during the Summer. The transformation of the landscape between Summer and Winter is truly breathtaking!

Here is an example of the Skogafoss waterfall, as I experienced it in August of 2022:

The moss on the rocks is a warm green from being in an ideal growing environment combination of moisture and almost never-ending light. The waterfall is providing a great volume of water, as there is plenty of melt from Eyjafallajokull and Myrdalsjokull, the two glaciers that feed the Skoga river.

Winter’s metamorphosis of Skogafoss creates a completely difference sense of place and emotion:

Much of the waterfall’s volume is reduced, as the glaciers are stocking up on snow and ice to take on the return of warmer days; the ice formations are now an integral part of Skogafoss, having captured a goodly portion of the water as it tried to pass by. Nevertheless, Skogafoss’ tell-tale spray persists during this chilling days, although the Sun’s light does not impinge on it at an angle to produce a glorious rainbow.

Both times of year produce a spectacular landscape, each of which draw me in to come back more often and experience the breadth of Iceland’s offerings.

A Return to Iceland

The Aurora Borealis in Iceland was magnificent, as captured in this video!

First of all, greetings to everyone! It’s been too long since my last post for all the wrong reasons.

Great news is my recent return to Iceland for the third time. This was the first foray into the land of Fire and Ice during the Winter season, as I wanted to see even more of the Ice part of this beautiful country. During ten days in February, my traveling companion, George Fellner, and I spent some quality time photographing the amazing landscapes in their Winter glory.

Here’s my first item to share from this epic journey (it’s almost 4 minutes long, and I hope you enjoy all of it along with the soundtrack):

Aurora in Vik, Iceland

This was the first time in my life that I experienced the Aurora Borealis in person, and it was absolutely magical, breathtaking and astounding!

We had scoped out a location ahead of time, which would provide a bit of foreground in the form of the hills that you see in these images; the location is about 20 minutes from the town of Vik, and definitely not the most popular place, as we had it to ourselves. A number of other locations had large groups of people gathered, as we could even hear them in the quiet of the night.

After setting up around 9 pm, I spent some time ensuring that all the camera settings were within a range that would work, dialing in the exposure on my remote trigger. Just after 10 pm, the first glimpses of the aurora started showing in the sky, much to our excitement! For the next hour we were treated to this magnificent celestial display.

For the photography nerds, these images were capture on the Canon EOS R5 using the 15-35mm f2.8L RF lens. I kept my aperture wide open at f2.8 and set ISO to 800. During the shoot I made some adjustments to exposure lengths depending on strength of the aurora; exposure was typically around 20 seconds.

Hope you enjoy this as much as I did!

Silent Sunday

A field of peace

A moment of reflection from last year’s voyage to Iceland…

A moment of serenity from Hellisandur.

A View into the Past

A 21st century bit of nostalgia

Sometimes, as I’m looking at some of my older photos, a bit of nostalgia creeps in with the memories of places visited and people met. Perusing some of my images from my June 2015 short trip to Iceland, I came across a set of shots that I took as I had followed the road beyond Siglufjörður along the coastline in the direction of Haganes.

If you ever get the chance, this is a lovely drive albeit it a bit of a winding road, as you climb the hills and follow the contours. At one point, I caught this view…

Literally, this road takes one above and below the clouds! The low-hanging cloud banks are above the water on this side of Haganes, providing a cozy blanket in which to wrap the peaks beyond the town.

As I processed this photo, I was struck by the light conditions, as the overall light was a bit of hazy blue; rather than process this out of the image, I chose to keep it, as I felt it gave a sense of an old image from days gone by. It also reminded me that I want to go back to Iceland again and again, as there is never enough time to capture all of its beauty.

Fjaðrárgljúfur Canyon (for Beliebers)

How Justin Bieber saved the Iceland economy.

For quite a while, I have heard the NPR commercial for Planet Money that mentions “Learn how Justin Bieber saved the Icelandic economy” and had no idea what they were talking about, as I’m not a Belieber.

During my photo tour of Iceland I got the answer to this mystery, as our fearless leader, Loren Fisher, mentioned that several of our locations were in a Justin Bieber video. Here’s one of them…

This is a view looking from Fjaðrárgljúfur canyon, which is a stunning area to visit, as you can see; in the above image, we’re looking back in a southerly direction toward the Ring Road looking down the Fjaðrár river. The name of this canyon is probably one of the more difficult Icelandic words to pronounce; it is a combination of two words: Fjaðrár, the name of the river, and gljúfur, which just means canyon.

This canyon is gorgeous and fun to explore, as it’s only about 2 kilometers long; just leave your fear of heights in the car, as it does have a depth of 100 meters (300 ft), which can be intimidating when viewed from the edges (as I experience a certain amount of vertigo at heights, I tend to be aware of this).

One of the things that really stood out for me are the soft grasses and mosses on the outcroppings into the canyon. They look rather inviting to lie down and take a nice nap (on a drier day), while listening to the wind and the water playing their tunes.

As the weather was a bit fierce, we didn’t spend a lot of time here. It does make me want to come back at some point to hike the canyon from the lower vantage point of the river’s edge. Be mindful that this does require an occasional bit of wading through the Fjaðrár, which will mean very cold water!

Here’s the Justin Bieber video with all the great Icelandic sights: “I’ll Show You”.

I can honestly say that it was fun to see the video and recognize numerous locations that we’d visited; also, I definitely didn’t pull some of the stunts that Bieber did, as they look genuinely risky without a crew to catch you!

A note about the photos; they were taken with a Canon EOS R5 and a Canon RF 24-105mm f4/L IS USM lens. As this was a rather overcast day, I had inserted a Kolari Vision Iridium color enhancing rear filter; I discovered these filters shortly before going on the Iceland trip and really like them, as they allow one to swap lenses and keep the same filter.

Reynisfjara Black Beach

There maybe something interesting besides the beach at Reynisfjara!

One of the possibly underrated stops during our Icelandic photo tour, was at the Reynisfjara black beach near Vik; it was a relatively short stop, as we were leaving Vik with our major attraction being the Strokkur geyser and the massive Gullfoss waterfall. Additionally, it was a drizzly, rainy morning and heavily overcast skies.

You might think that this is not a recipe for great photography; of course, it could be an opportunity to take some different shots from the usual beach pictures…

The basalt columns at Reynisfjara are magnificent to behold and I’ve found that examining the structure provided by these magnificent columns presents an interesting mix of points of view. Seeing how they line up in front of the lens and the patterns they generate is one of my favorite ways to explore this type of wall.

There’s much more than just the patterns and textures, as Nature conquers every possible opportune spot…

This plant found just enough soil to hold onto the basalt column and present some pretty little flowers. Of course, there are also plenty of mosses, which one expects. These plants with their paper thin white flowers really stood out.

Of course, the elements do claim some victims among these plants, which does present an image that is a bit more tragic, yet interesting.

Iceland’s Waterfalls – part 3

The power of water!

Thus far I’ve covered waterfalls that were part of our photo tour with Loren Fisher, whose workshops and tours I recommend wholeheartedly! As I had convinced my good friend, George, to spend some extra time in Iceland beyond the scheduled tour, we went up north to the Akureyri area for some additional exploration.

The Goðafoss waterfall was one of the places that I wanted us to visit, as I had been there before and these falls left a lasting impression on me…

Even though it happened to be a cloudy, rainy day, the walk toward the falls begins to tell the story of how impressive Goðafoss is.

The name Goðafoss is interesting, as it could mean one of two things: either waterfall of the goð (pagan idols) or waterfall of the goði (chieftain). Linguistic place name experts, such as Svavar Sigmundsson, suggest that it is the former, as the two crags of the falls resemble pagan idols.

As we get closer to the falls, we can get ore of an impression of their sheer magnitude. While these falls are neither the tallest nor the most voluminous in Iceland, it is hard to not feel their impact. The drop in the river Skjálfandafljót over Goðafoss is a mere 12m over a 30m width, which are small numbers compared to Gullfoss.

Looking from atop the Eastern bank of the falls, it was amazing to see this much water flow by in fairly close proximity.

On this day, the weather was rainy and breezy, which was a little different from my previous visit in 2015…

On that beautiful day, I did make it down to the water level to get the above shot. With a very wet clamber to get down there, I didn’t want to risk it on our recent visit.

Iceland’s Waterfalls – part 2

The Golden Falls

The day after we visited the waterfalls in yesterday’s post (Iceland’s Waterfalls – part 1), we had another spectacular day! After spending some quality time on a black sand beach in Vik (a post to come), we visited the Mighty Geysir – Strokkur and then came upon Gullfoss!

Gullfoss, the ‘Golden Falls’ is located in southwest Iceland and easily accessible during a day trip from Reykjavik. The waterfall is part of the Hvitá river, as it flows through a three-step staircase into a canyon; the steps are 11 m and 21 m, before a final step of 31 m into a crevice. The average amount of water flowing through the falls is 141 cubic meters (5000 cu-ft) per second, which made it very tempting for hydroelectric exploitation.

There were attempts to create a hydroelectric power plant here during various times in the 20th century, but each failed due to the prohibitive costs to potential investors. In the end, the rights to the waterfall were sold to the state of Iceland, and it is now protected.

Here’s a quick video of these immense waterfalls in my YouTube channel:

The Golden Falls

The images in this post are taken with a Canon EOS EOS R5 using a Canon RF24-105mm F4 L IS USM lens. First level processing of the images was done using Skylum’s Luminar AI software; touch up processing was done in Photoshop. Video was captured with an iPhone 13 Pro Max and processed with iMovie.

Iceland’s Waterfalls – part 1

The Icelandic landscape is graced with so many waterfalls that it often feels as if you can photograph one from just about any location on this wonderful island. At one point during our trip I did a count and saw 19 waterfalls from a single vantage point.

In this first waterfall post, I have images from some of the falls along the southern part of the ring road, which we encountered on the day that we traveled from the Snæfellsnes peninsula toward our next stop in the town of Vik.

Our first stop was the amazing Seljalandsfoss waterfall; the 60m drop of the water provides an impressive spectacle. One of the features that really makes this waterfall a great place to visit is that there is a cavern behind the falls that can be walked up to for a view of the landscape through the curtain of water. Seljalandsfoss waterfall is part of the river Seljalandsá, which has its origins underneath the Eyjafjallajökull glacier.

Our next stop on this day had us visit the mighty Skógafoss waterfall, which is about 25m wide and has a drop of 60m. Photographing this waterfall was an awe inspiring experience, as the shallow side of the Skógá river is a perfect spot from which to capture it. As the weather really cooperated, there were moments of double rainbows across the river in front of the waterfall. As the land in front of the falls is very flat, visitors can walk up close to the actual waterfall.

The Kvernufoss waterfall is a less often visited neighbor of Skógafoss, possibly because it’s a bit more of a hike, and it’s not as powerful; the falls are a mere 30m, half the height of the other two powerhouses of the day. The walk up to Kvernufoss is stunning, as it meanders up by the river Kverna toward the falls; the hike is about 20 minutes and mostly across a path that is well maintained. This waterfall is another one where it is possible to catch a view from behind the falls.

One note about our visit to Kvernufoss: as we were shooting, we caught sight of a marriage proposal that was taking place; we made sure to capture this, which was a stroke of luck for the photographer on assignment to shoot the proposal, as she had a bit of equipment trouble and we were able to provide her with the images of the event. Sometimes, luck is there and it’s nice to be able to help!

More waterfalls later in the week!

Fumaroles of Hverir

A teaser of the Hverir geothermal area.

There are some locations that you want to visit more than once; whether it is the beauty of the colors, the raw power of the water, or the otherworldliness, there is just something that pulls you back in. For me, the Myvatn region in northern Iceland has that hold over me. I have been there twice thus far and want to go back to explore much, much more!

One of the key attractions is the Hverir geothermal area, which is located just off the Ring Road…

There is a definite sense of being on an alien planet, when you get up close to these fumaroles and take in the influence that sulfur has had on this landscape. Between the sounds, the sights and the smell, I could think of what makes people think of locales, such as Hell; one can imagine that demon’s breath is being spewed forth from the very ground upon which we walk!

I’ll leave you with this teaser, as I’ll do several posts about some of the views that were available in this region! More to come!

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