Category Archives: Photography

I was ready for a quiet day of mainly driving on Sunday. I was also ready to report a total of about 1800 shots taken, which is a bit lower than for the Cuba trip, not unreasonable given the slightly shorter duration and the fact that this was mainly landscape photography.

Then we got to the puffin colony… 🙂

Having visited a couple of interesting rock formations (basically basalt columns like Staffa or The Giant’s Causeway), we drove a short distance to the top of the cliff, which was essentially home to thousands of puffins, which were variously sitting quietly or diving off into the sea to catch food. They seem to be quite unafraid of humans, and because of the prevailing wind onto the cliff they had to glide slowly at take-off and landing, sometimes very close to us, which made photography feasible, if still challenging.

Of course, this is what my kit, consisting of the Canon 7D and 70-300 IS lens, is built for. Any minor inferiority complex relative to the 5D and medium format brigade vanished in the face of my 8 frames per second and high performance auto-focus, and I got a number of good shots. The above is probably one of the best, although there are several other good candidates.

It did put the shooting total up a bit. In less than an hour I took well over 300 shots, filling a 16GB memory card and flattening a battery, but who cares. Together with the other shots from the day the total now stands over 2150 – even higher than Cuba!

Our hosts had organised a wonderful end to the day. In the outskirts of Reykjavik we diverted to the hospital where Gruni (Finn’s wife, who had joined us on the tour) works. There we were doubly treated, both to a celebratory glass of champagne and a couple of chocolates, but also to an exhibition of the best of Finn’s photographs, in wonderful large prints. Definitely something to aspire to.

I’m back in the hotel, and busy packing for an early start. I’ll do a final post when I’m home, summing up and listing my tips for any future travellers, but it’s been a wonderful trip and highly recommended to anyone else who wants to try.

You don’t realise quite how empty the interior of Iceland is, or just how much time you’re going to spend bouncing over unmade roads through deserts of rock and mud. It’s not surprising that NASA test their extra-terrestrial rovers here. Fortunately the scenery when you get to each location more than makes up for it.

We started Monday by driving up to Kerlingfjoll (which roughly translates as “Bitch Mountain” :)). This is an amazingly colourful geothermal centre reminiscent of The Artists’ Palette in Death Valley, only with ice, rain, snow and steam all mixed in! The only problem was that it was blowing a gale, tipping with rain and only just above freezing. I braved it with my new raincoat, Kata rainbag and cheap filter on the camera, and got some great shots. One of the rest of the party had a little Canon in a waterproof housing (like I use for snorkelling) which was maybe slightly OTT but worked well, and her husband had a rainbag like mine, but everyone else gave up on photography which was an enormous pity.

After lunch we travelled up to Hveravellir (“Hot Field”), to see another geothermal display, this time a mix of hot pools and small geysirs. On the way back we diverted up to the Langjokull glacier, at a point where the jeeps could actually drive up onto it. This was a brilliant experience.

Unfortunately at this point I realised that my main 15-85mm lens was starting to play up, and my photos from the glacier aren’t that great. I don’t know whether it’s the vibration, the moisture or just a fault which was waiting to happen, but I’m getting a nice soft focus at the top/left of the picture, whether I want it or not :(. Fortunately I also have the 17-85mm as a spare, so hopefully this won’t put too much of a dent in proceedings. Yesterday also saw the possible demise of one of the batteries for the 7D, but I won’t know until I’ve recharged and re-tested it.

I’m going to start building up a list of tips for a trip such as this, but a spare everything, a rain bag and a cheap filter you don’t mind wiping with anything to hand are all essential!

Hotel Geysir may look nice, and dinner was great, but the rooms are a bit chilly and there’s really nowhere to type on the PC, so I’ll stop here… More tomorrow.