Another little bit of inspiration from our intrepid tree, as she stands firm amidst the elements and whatever the New England climate can bring to bear…
A Winter’s Tale
This capture from nearly 9 years ago during a lovely snow fall intends to share a bit of the peace and tranquility that exists during these weather events. I love watching the soft, fluffy snow flakes fall toward the ground, while taking in the near-perfect quiet that comes from having a sound-absorbing blanket of snow.
What do you like about Winter? Or is it the one season that you simply hope to see finish as soon as possible?
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…
Fjaðrárgljúfur Canyon
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).
Fjaðrárgljúfur Canyon II
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.
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…
Reynisfjara Basalt
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…
Cave Flora
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.
Elemental Damage
Of course, the elements do claim some victims among these plants, which does present an image that is a bit more tragic, yet interesting.
Sometimes on a nice sunny day with an interesting cloud cover, you see a scene in front of you and photograph it. However, in your mind’s eye, you know there’s more to this landscape that you just captured than what you saw on that day.
If this ever happened to you, we have that in common, as it’s occurred numerous times to me. An example is this shot of Nubble Light on Cape Neddick, Maine, back in June of 2013.
Nubble Light
This lighthouse has been photographed by many, which had caused me to not ever shoot it until this day; the simple reason was that I hadn’t seen anything different from what I’d seen in all the wonderful photograph created by others of this lighthouse. That day, I felt that there was something a little different, so I got clambered down the rocks to get a lower vantage point and shot several exposure bracketed sequences. Overall, not a bad shot, but nothing especially outstanding.
It really was a nice day, as my mother and sister were visiting us from the Netherlands and we were showing them some of the sights in the area. When we got home that evening, I offloaded the images and took a quick look at them.
Over the next couple of weeks, there were a couple of times that I thought about editing the shots, but every time I started I got stuck, as I didn’t quite ‘feel’ it. Approximately 6 weeks after I took the shot, I finally sat down to create the following end result…
Nubble Brooding
What was different about this editing session? For one, I was in a somewhat darker mood, which allowed me to connect to a heavier cloud cover and the idea of a roiling sea; also, at that point my mind’s view of what the image could hold, had time to articulate itself. The resultant image is one that after almost 10 years, I still enjoy seeing, and I have resisted the temptation to re-edit it to make it ‘better’ (as our skills improve and we learn new software, this temptation is real).
The lesson I learned at that time was to allow myself to recognize when it’s not the right moment and/or mood to edit a certain image, as our creative selves may need some hidden inspiration.
The images were captured using a Canon EOS 5D Mk III and a Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens. Back in 2013 I used Photomatix Pro for my HDR processing.
On this Christmas Day, a simple post and a simple wish. May all of you feel blessed and safe during this Holiday Season and may we all find peace in the New Year!
Nubble Winter Lighting
This shot of Nubble Light from 2014 is a night-time long exposure of about 2.5 minutes, which also allowed the reflection in the water to become soft and filled with mood.
Yes, kids of all ages, it is that time of year!! Everyone will be watching the flightpath of a certain jolly old elf, as he departs from his workshop on the North Pole to make a trip around this globe of ours…
He’s on the way!
A little bit of fun with editing to create this image. The base image is a 131 second exposure at 100 ISO that I took back in 2014 with a Canon EOS 5D Mk III and a Canon EF 24-105mm L IS USM lens. The flying Santa background is thanks to Skylum, who provided this for their Luminar customers.
Have a wonderful weekend, and I hope that you’re enjoying the holiday season!
As I was thinking of what iPhone image might be an interesting pick, I looked for something that I shot around this time of year. Then I came across this one that I still enjoy seeing after 9 years…
Slice of the Season
After slicing some of the ice cream cake, the pattern on the knife in front of the cake caught my eye, and it almost begged to be photographed. What could I do?
I hope that you enjoy some ice cream cake with your favorite holiday meal this season!!
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…
Godafoss – down-river
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.
Godafoss – Eastern bank
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.
Godafoss – top view
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…
Godafoss – 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.
One of the fun parts of going through my collection of Yoga Tree images is seeing what ideas are created now, as opposed to how I saw this more than 8 years ago. I’ve made in-roads into organizing this collection of nearly 500 images and found this one inspiring…
Neon Daybreak
As I have more tools in my arsenal than I did back when I captured this image, I happened upon a Luminar AI template that provided a great starting point: Neon Skyline, which is part of the Artistic Collection. Building on this, I forged my own template that worked better for this image and coined it Neon Daybreak.
This image evoked both a sense of hope and a feeling of futurism, which I think is part of what all of us might experience; I can imagine the next generation of flying machines that might one day cross this sky… will they be support vehicles or terminators?
I would love to hear what thoughts come to your mind when you view this image.
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!
The Golden Falls – 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.
