Iceland » Traverse Earth

Welcome to Iceland

Jul 152012

This is the first photo I took in Iceland. My flight was scheduled to get in at midnight and was delayed by half an hour. It was torture as we approached because I could see the sun was setting. I knew it would be light all night, but the sunset was incredible. It felt like it took forever to get through immigration, get my bag and make my way to the guesthouse. I didn’t spend long in the room as I quickly broke out my gear and took off… successfully leaving my tripod in the room. Fortunately my travel buddy offered to run back and get it while I looked for a shot. I think it was technically sunrise when I took this shot and the color had died down a bit. As you can see it was really windy. Rather than trying to freeze the flowers (which may have been impossible) I decided to increase my f-stop and let them get as blurry as possible.

Lonely Shack

Europe, Iceland, Travel 241 Responses »

Jul 132012

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.

Beneath the Basalt, Myvatn, Iceland

Europe, Iceland, Travel 7 Responses »

Jul 102012

“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! ***

Flowers Forever, Iceland

Europe, Iceland, Travel 5 Responses »

Jul 082012

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.

The (Slightly) Less Beaten Path

Europe, Iceland, Travel 3 Responses »

Jul 062012

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.

The Music House, East Fjords, Iceland

Europe, Iceland, Travel 3 Responses »

Jul 032012

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!

Fjords and Flowers

Europe, Iceland, Travel 5 Responses »

Jul 012012

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.

Midnight Horses, Westfjords, Iceland

Animals, Europe, Iceland, Travel 10 Responses »

Jun 292012

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.

Golden Morning, Iceland

Iceland, Travel 3 Responses »

Jun 262012

Having so many photos from Iceland makes it pretty difficult to decide what to process first. I wanted something that typified Iceland for me, and was taken early on in the trip. This was taken towards the end of my first full night of shooting as the sun made its way back up over the horizon to track across the sky. The farm, the ocean and the mountain really do give you a good taste of the extremes experienced as you travel around the country. This was taken in the Westfjords, shortly after the decision was made to stop taking photos and get to bed. But, how could we not stop here?

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