Iceland pt.5 - Allsorts

 

More individual shots from the Iceland tour..

 

Humpback whale blowing water vapour into the morning Sun. 
An amazing couple of hours in Husavik bay, seeing a lot of Humpbacks, Minke and three massive Blue whales. 

 

 

A fumerol venting sulphurous gas through the Earths crust.  Taken using a tripod, soft edge ND grad and ND8 filter at f/22 to get a bit of blur into the steam and balance the sky "in camera".

Wild textures in a wild landscape. 
The wild colours in an Icelandic landscape can dominate the viewers attention, so I chose mono to amplify the focus on the shapes, textures and forms.
 

Sunset near Grenivik.  Taken at 00:26am and the Sun is still up behind the clouds!
Taken from a bayside hostel with proper cookers and even an outdoor hot tub!  Luxury.
Tripod, high aperture and 5second exposure to saturate those glorious colours and smooth out the water.
Two exposures composited - one for the sky and one for foreground.

 

Gannet flying alongside the ferry on the way north.  The only other wildlife en route was Puffins and Dolphins.
Dolphin spotting being a favourite game from our cabin bunks.

 

Grjotagja cave, underneath a rift in the surface thermal springs fill the pools with steaming water.
Used for bathing before local eruptions drove the temperature back up again.

 

Taken in a wide expansive valley known for its horses with a towering wall of mountains to the north.
Iceland bans importing livestock to preserve its native breeds.  These stocky horses are the only breed to be
found on the island and are a fairly common sight in the lowlands and plains.

 

 

 

 

The trans-Atlantic rift between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates.
Moving apart about an inch per year may not sound much, but the wooden paths they built a few years ago where closed
because they'd been pulled apart and fallen into the rift!?  A lot of Icelandic construction is influenced by the knowledge that they will inevitably have to rebuild it in a couple of years. 

 

 

A long exposure of a part of Gullfoss.  Tripod, f/22, ND8 filter = 1/2s.  Plenty when the flow of water is so torrential!

 

 

A Redwing collecting food for its young, with a backdrop of the ever present blue Lupin that covers swathes of Iceland.
They breed in Iceland and some migrate to the UK in the autumn/winter.  Having made the trip in a big ferry over a number of days I can only be extremely impressed.

 

Flood plains at the mouth of a glacial valley in the south, where bridges are washed away so often we crossed several temporary ones that looked like the military had just put them up!
I knew exactly what I was going to do when I took this shot.  The landscape and contrasts were so dynamic I had to stop (which isn't always easy with narrow roads, raised up on banks to avoid snow in the winter).

 



Iceland pt.4 - More Panoramas

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Some more composite panorama images from my trip to Iceland last June.  From the top..

 

1. An Icelandic church - like many there, built on farmland for the farm workers.  Even today we found the rural communities to be very religious and churches still feature a large role in peoples lives.  Christianity took over from the pagan practice of worshipping Norse gods around 1000AD, putting an end to eating horsemeat and the laws allowing parents to kill any unwanted offspring!

 



2. Another fantastic stretch of road, this one in the north, near Akureyri.  There are plenty more roads that I want to ride down in the world, but if there are any more scenic and varied than Icelands route 1, I will be astounded.

 

3.  The wonderful Seljalandsfoss waterfall.  A break in the clouds at 10pm allowing the Sun to light up the scene against a suitably moody sky.  Our tent can be seen in the distant bottom left, not a bad spot at all - with at least 5 waterfalls descending over the plateau, which used to be the coastline in the not too distant past!  Something that is very alien to a south west Englander, where erosion is doing the opposite.

 

4.  A geographers paradise, rivers, hills, snow capped mountains, lava fields, lush green flood plains and our road ahead cutting through the lava.  A bit dreary to be considered good photography, but I love the drama and adventure of the varied landscape and I'm always a sucker for a nice twisty road winding it's way into the distance.

 

5.  The famous Gullfoss (Golden Waterfall), part of the "golden circle" tourist route in the west, near Reykjavik.  It is the most powerful waterfall in Europe and (as with all of Icelands large waterfalls) an amazing experience to visit. 

 

 

 



McCullin

Just a quick post to mention a documentary movie called McCullin, which looks right up my strasse.  Waiting for the hard copy release on 25th feb, but for those who can't wait, it's available to view here..

http://www.curzoncinemas.com/film_on_demand/1050/mccullin/

My bookshelf is weighed down with accounts of human beings in the extremes of war, it fascinates me totally and I've always wondered if I could have made it as a war photographer.  Making this an un-missable film for me..

Iceland pt.3 - Waterfalls everywhere

 

Three more waterfall shots, trying to capture some of the rugged beauty while trying to avoid taking the usual tourist shots.

 

The first is Dettifoss again, from above, using an ND8 filter to darken and slow down the shutter speed.  Riding on the bikes enabled us to avoid the bus loads of tourists, while I still managed to

carry my tripod with me, for exactly this kind of photograph.  Note:  the rocks I took the previously posted Dettifoss panoramic from are the ones just below the center of this shot.  They were kind of wet, slippery and pretty scary!

 

The second image is a relatively high speed telephoto shot of the face of the falls. 

Mesmerising in real life and practically impossible to capture in a still image, but

I like the shot.  I took quite a few with varying shutter speeds and zoom, before choosing this one for it's composition, variety, action and balance.

 

The third image is a composite panorama of Godafoss.

15 wide angle portrait images stitched to form a sweeping view of the falls, as wide as my equipment would allow from this fantastic viewpoint jutting out from the vertical cliff face riverbank.

The pure ice melt water takes on a fantastic colour, which is really picked out by the polariser and

lucky enough to have a little dramatic cloud in the background on that day, rather than blue skies.

 

We found out later that while we headed anti-clockwise from the ferry in the Sun (there is only one major road around Iceland), those that chose clockwise were getting heavy rain and sleet.

Apparently this is often the case in Iceland, luckily we'd met a veteran Iceland explorer who while discussing which way around to go, told us "if it's cloudy in the South, head North".  Blunt, honest and very good advice as it turns out.   By the time we circumnavigated around to the South, besides one hail shower, it was back to being nice again!

 

 

ISO100, 22mm, f/22, 1.3s, ND8 filter, circular polariser, levels, desaturate

ISO400, 200mm, f/6.3, 1/1000s

ISO320, 16mm, f/10, 1/30s, -0.3 ev, circular polariser, composite

Iceland pt.2 - Panoramas

 

4 Panoramic composites from the first few days and no ice in sight!  In fact all our jumpers stayed packed away as, while the UK was having a shocking summer, Iceland was having a relative heat wave, basking in the 20s (celcius) thanks to the northerly shift in the gulf stream.

 

To say the landscape varies a lot in Iceland is kind of like saying "clouds come in different shapes".  As demonstrated by the first four panoramic images I've processed so far.  All from North West Iceland, but looking like they came from different planets!

 

The first is a black sand beach, baking in the 23 hours a day Sunshine.  An amazing sight and not a sun lounger or donkey within a hundred miles.  Eagle eyes will spot that I did tell a small lie about the lack of ice, since there is some ice capped mountains in the far distance! 

 

 

Black sand beach, with en-suite waterfall
ISO400, 16mm, f/18, 1/100s, circular polariser, composite

The second is the Viti crater (Hell Crater) near Myvatn.  Part of the Krafla caldera, the most active region of the North Atlantic Rift, between the North American and European tectonic plates. 

It's a fantastic road to ride up, carved through lava fields, up a valley - one side barren - one side lush green vegetation, then straight through the geothermal power station and up to a great view point.

Apparently it's rare to great a calm weather day there - guess we were lucky!

Viti crater.  A 300m wide lake, formed after an explosive eruption in 1724.
ISO400, 16mm, f/9, 1/80s, circular polariser, composite

Third is the monsterous Dettifoss waterfall, my favourite of all the falls we visited.

The approach is pure drama, walking through molten rock formations toward a distant column of steam and mist.  Then you hear it thundering from over a ridge ahead, glimpses of a massive river between the rocks on to the south.  As you ascend the ridge you feel it vibrating the earth beneath you, then as you crest the ridge it just takes your breath away.  One of the most amazing things I've ever seen and it's a true natural wonder.

 

100m wide (see small specs of people on far bank), it averages around 200 cubic meters of water per second, with upto ~600 during the spring melts.  Pure raging awesome power.  I took a couple of panoramics, while trying not to get soaked by the spray, luckily this one with the rainbow didn't have too much water on the lens.

The mighty Dettifoss - biggest waterfall in Europe, complete with rainbow.
ISO100, 16mm, f/8, 1/100s, composite

 

Last but not least, a panorama of Mars... aka Hverir, Namafjall. 

Fumaroles, volcanic vents and bubbling mud turn the landscape acidic and coat it with colourful minerals and chemicals.  Another great road to ride (not sure there was a bad one - at least not for scenery anyway!) and another Sunny day.  I definitely didn't pack for climbing volcanoes in 20+ heat, but it was well worth it for the views though...

 

Alien landscape, Namafjall.
ISO400, 35mm, f/13, 1/200s, circular polariser, composite



Iceland pt.1 - Germany

Two photos from our Iceland motorcycle trip last year (at last).

France, Belgium and Holland were blitzed in a day, with a rainy night in Arnhem (of Operation Market Garden infamy) - so no photos to speak of. 

These photos were taken during two brief stops in Germany, on our ride up to the top of Denmark to catch the ferry.  The first on an overnight stay in the medieval town of Lubeck and the second from a lunch break in Bremen.

Despite the RAF doing a pretty effective raid on it in WW2, Lubeck still has more than
its fair share of beautiful old buildings, surrounded by the river Trave, it's a real gem to visit.  We passed through on the day the German football team qualified for the next stage of the Euros and joined in with the celebrations and horn beeping. 

The next day wasn't quiet so jolly (at least at the time), riding up Denmark in a massive rainstorm.  Photography was not a priority!

Reflections in Lubeck, Germany
ISO 800, 17mm, f/4.5, 1s, -1.3ev, braced on a fence post, noise reduction

Architextures - Bremen, Germany
ISO800, 180mm, f/11, 1/250s, -1ev, levels, mono