Across the road from the somewhat creepy “Music House”, in the East-fjords, was this equally creepy shack. It was an odd location, but the mountains in the background were begging to become a picture. I had to act quickly as within a minute the clouds had rolled in and totally obscured the mountains from view.
I admire photographers who notice the little things. I’ve got an obsession with capturing sweeping vistas and the vastness of the world I encounter. It makes me miss a lot of the small details. It’s nice to spot something small and carefully figure out how to capture it. Tonight’s photo was taken in a stream in Romania. I lay down in the stream and got very wet for this shot. The focus is a little soft, but I like it none the less. It’s a good reminder to remember the little things when I’m out with my camera. One day I may even invest in a macro lens.
“Warning, rocks have fallen from the ceiling before and they will fall again”, the sign read.
Could this small hole in the side of this immense lava flow, near Lake Myvatn, really be the entrance to the underground hot springs we’d been hearing about. If it wasn’t, and we were brained by falling rocks that really wouldn’t have felt worth it. Venturing further in we saw water. Then we recognized the familiar sulfur smell of a hot spring. Venturing inside we found a small cavern, beneath the basalt, housing a pool of hot water. Upon shining a light on it we discovered that it was crystal blue, much like the water in the caves here in Bermuda, but it was steaming.
At this point I wanted to tell you what it’s called but can’t find the name (I did find this video showing the entrance though, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj8Fu-si19Q )! I really need to start carrying a notebook. What I do know is that there were two caves. one is used by men, the other by women. We didn’t know which one we were in. In summer, the men’s is too hot to swim in. As we didn’t know which one we were in, we decided not to risk it.
*** Edit: Check out the comments, Charlotte has found the name for me! ***
If you have a 3 hour drive to make in Iceland it’s probably a good idea to assume that you’ll take 7-8 hours to get where you’re going. Not because of traffic or the roads. There’s very little traffic, and although the roads do get a bit rough from time to time you can generally keep your pace up. The problem is that Iceland is incredible. You’re guaranteed to find lots of places to stop that you had no idea existed. This is what happened in the case of today’s photo. We had already pushed our check-in to the apartment we had in Reykjavik back by 3 hours and were just going to make it on time. Then we entered a field of flowers. We drove through them arguing over whether the big rock rising out of them was an island just off shore or on land. It was on land (I was right :-)). I knew that we were pressed for time but I couldn’t resist pulling down the dirt road to catch some photos of this giant field of flowers. Following taking a few photos, and shooting a time lapse we climbed up on top of the jeep and just sat there for a while. Then we called the owner of the apartment and told him we were going to be even later. We didn’t drive all the way down the dirt road. I like to imagine there’s a campground at the end because when I go back next June I want to spend a couple of nights here.
Godafoss has to be in the running for the easiest waterfall to access in Iceland. There’s a gas station and souvenir store with a view to the falls and it was our first encounter with tour buses. They were all parked to the right of the falls. So we took this narrow path up the other side of the river and I found this cool little bridge. I recognized it from Trey Ratcliffe’s blog and was shocked to find it! I thought it was in the middle of nowhere. You can tell just how beaten the lesser path is. So much so that the bridge is broken! Even with the Tour buses and souvenir stores, the impressiveness of Godafoss is not diminished. Naturally pictures of this waterfall will follow, they’re just a bit trickier to process than this little old bridge.
Clouds poured off of the mountains into the entrance of the fjord when a lone building, painted as if to hide in the sky, appeared on the shoreline. As the car rolled to a stop, music filled the air, operatic vocals backed by an energetic orchestra. The perfect backing for the grand setting. It was beautiful, but eerie. The music was emanating from an empty building, and there didn’t seem to be anyone around. After quickly snapping a few photos, the horror movie feel of the place took over and we hopped back into the car. Driving about a minute further up the road, at the very ends of the property, the music still audible, we found a farmer working. With the source of the music located, we could only admire the power of this guy’s stereo!
Sitting here, after taking this photo, I came to the conclusion that we were not going to make it to the bird cliffs at Latrabjarg. They are the furthest point of land in the direction this photo is looking in. As you can see, we still had a long way to go. It was still a great night with some pretty dramatic scenery. All of the photos I’ve released from Iceland thus far are from this night. It offered up the best sunset we had the entire time we were in Iceland.
After failing to reach the giant bird-cliff at Latrabjarg we were making our way back to the hostel. I stumbled upon this scene. Three identical looking horses hanging about a ruin in front of a shack. It was definitely time to make a stop. My travel buddy was a large animal vet who had been trying to catch some sleep on the drive back. She didn’t mind getting woken up for these guys though.
Icelandic horses are pretty incredible. They’re little stout things but incredibly photogenic with rugged coats and flowing manes. You could probably spend all of your time in Iceland photographing just the horses. There were a number of fields full of horses I could see myself spending hours at if I had more time. I’m hoping to spend all of June in Iceland next year. If I do get to do that I’ll definitely spend a lot of time hopping fences for closeups of Icelandic horses.
This is the last of my photos from Prague, for now, anyway. It’s a great city and I’ll certainly be heading back at some point. This is one of the most recognizable landmarks in Prague, Charles Bridge. It’s pretty difficult to get a shot with no tourists crossing the bridge. I’ve talked about other methods I’ve used involving combining multiple images to mask out any people or just getting there really early. With this shot, it all came down to patience. I set up and waited until there was no one in the way.
As I mentioned yesterday I’ve been doing a lot of photo processing this weekend. As a side effect I’ve found photos that needed processing I’d forgotten about. I started by going through my Prague file, even though I was sure I’d exhausted that supply. As a result I found today’s photo, and I’m glad I did. I spend a lot of time while I’m wandering about with my camera looking for a good foreground for something interesting I’ve found. The breakwater, with its ducks and seagulls lent itself very well to this purpose.
