During my trip to Iceland, I was enthralled by the dramatic landscape of Landmannalaugar and fortunate that the road had just opened a few days before my visit.  Because it was considered early in the season, there were very few people around.  I camped for 4 days, with the main challenge being that I slept during the day.  I always wonder why anyone would visit the Arctic during the summer and sleep rather than stay up all night.  Except for my travel buddy, I had Landmannalaugar all to myself each night from 8pm until 5am.  This is another one of my favorite images that I created after hiking up to the Brennisteinsalda steam vents and photographing the dramatic light on Blahnukur.

I want to share another one of my favorite Atlantic puffin images from the bird cliffs at Latrabjarg in the Northwestern Fjords of Iceland.  It took me 9 years to return to this fantastic location so that I could photograph these cute birds.  I was fortunate that the clouds parted late in the evening allowing the sun to bathe the cliffs in golden light.  I like this puffins open beak with the fantastic bokeh background of the cliffs behind it.

My regular readers will have noticed that I am a big fan of shooting wide-angle landscape images and seldom use a telephoto lens other than for wildlife photography.  I enjoy discovering patterns in nature with a medium telephoto lens, but I prefer to shoot grand and dramatic scenes.  I also think that it is technically more challenging.  This iceberg detail and reflection picture from Jokulsarlon is a notable recent exception.  The blue color of the ice comes from the density of the ice absorbing all the colors of the spectrum, except blue which is reflected.   Photographing blue ice is best in overcast conditions, of which I had plenty.

During my trip to Iceland, I visited the spectacular Jokulsarlon 5 different nights over 2 weeks hoping to photograph an epic midnight sunset.  On the night that I finally created this image, the magic light had threatened to overwhelm the clouds for several hours.  I created my nicest stranded icebergs on the beach image, Jokulsarlon Beach Sunset 2, at 12:45am.  I don’t remember how I occupied my time for the next hour, but by 2:45am I was set up and ready to photograph the sunrise light when it briefly radiated underneath the heavy clouds and illuminated the mountains above the iceberg choked lagoon.

I’ve been editing my images from my trip to Iceland the last few days.  My regular readers might recall that I was complaining about the dreary weather the entire trip.  Just because the conditions are miserable does not mean that there weren’t any photos to be had.  Due to my years of photographing Alaska, I am adept at shooting in cloudy conditions.  While the general public is happy with blue skies (as I am about to enjoy myself this afternoon), the light that I need to create dramatic photographs requires being willing to work in less than inspiring conditions.  For example, consider this image of the Brennisteinsalda steam vents.  I created it at the end of a cloudy day in Landmannalaugar when there was no sunset light.  I experimented by taking over 200 images of the steam emanating from the ground in order to capture the steam pattern and dark clouds in this the decisive moment.

Yesterday, I spent 6 hours editing, processing, keywording, and sizing my Atlantic puffin photographs for the web.  As busy as my summer is, I am not going to finish processing the rest of my Iceland trip any time soon.  This is one of my favorites.  I like how the puffin’s breast is pointing forward with the orange bokeh from the sunset illuminating the cliff.  I always preach that the most important part of a great wildlife image is not the subject, but what is going on behind it.  Clean, simple background like cliffs and mountains in the distance yield the best results.  I created this image with my Canon 7D and 400mm f4 DO IS lens on a Gitzo GT2931 tripod with an Acratech Ultimate ballhead and Wimberley Sidekick.

As my regular readers will note, I experienced mostly gloomy weather during my trip to Iceland.  While the bad weather did nothing to overcome my SAD, it did provide me with some incredible lighting conditions for landscape photography.  The highlight of my trip was camping and shooting for 4 days at Landmannalaugar.  I was disappointed that the colorful hills were covered in ash from the recent eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, but their was still plenty of spectacular scenery to shoot everywhere I looked.  I explored the main hiking trails from the campground and became particularly enchanted with the geothermal steam vents at the base of Brennisteinsalda.  I returned to this surreal location 2 nights in a row and was rewarded with this dramatic image when the clouds parted and the sun illuminated the summit of Blahnukur in golden light.

Before I went to Iceland, I researched some of the locations that I intended to shoot, but had not paid that much attention to Landmannalaugar (pronounced Land-mann-a-loi-ger).  This fantastic location, 4 hours from Rekjavik in the interior of Iceland, was a pleasant surprise.  Fortunately, the 4WD road had just opened the week before my visit.  After driving the final 40 off-road kilometers, two shallow river beds (with a rental car!) were the final obstacles between me and the scenic beauty that I was about to experience.  I always try to get to a new location early enough to scout the area because I don’t like to be rushed, but it was definitely time to shoot once the car was parked.  The sky was full of perfect cotton-candy clouds and the sun danced across the jaw-dropping scenery.  I grabbed my camera gear and quickly set out to explore the river bed to the east of the campground.  Within a half-hour of my arrival, I focused my attention on this composition to create this image.

I’ve been intending to add some new images from my trip to Iceland, but have had a lot going on the last week.  I was pretty underwhelmed by the photos that I’d seen of icebergs stranded on the beach in front of Jokulsarlon before my trip, so this location was not a priority for me to shoot.  I scouted this location a few times in the middle of the night, but the clouds and light were terrible.  I either did not shoot any pictures or deleted most of them once I got home.  However, I created this surprisingly beautiful photograph at 12:30am on my last night at Jokulsarlon.  I love the color that the clouds reflected from the midnight sun.  This translucent piece of ice made a nice foreground, as well as the repetition patterns of the larger icebergs behind it.  This was also as dark as it got during my entire 15 day visit, which was great for shooting but not for sleeping.

This is my favorite Atlantic puffin image from my Iceland trip.  I had wanted to do-over the puffins I shot on my first visit to Iceland 9 years ago.  I was glad they were still around, though not in the same numbers I remembered.  I only spent 1 night photographing them on the cliffs at Latrabjarg, but was fortunate the sky was clear at sunset which bathed the puffins in golden light.  Just when I thought I would have the cliffs to myself, a tour group showed up.  I can’t complain because I moved around enough to avoid the puffin-jams and still photographed some beautiful poses.  The cliffs are between 50-100m high, so I got as close to the edge as I was comfortable, but people have fallen to their deaths by getting too close, including an unfortunate German tourist a week after my visit.  My heart went out to his family when I heard the news.  I’ve got many more puffin & Iceland images to share in the weeks ahead.