Wake-up call at 5am – welcome to Iceland! I wish I could say I got at least 5 hours of sleep, but it was more like 3-4 hours. But this is way too exciting to feel tired!
Our first destination was the beach at Jökulsárlón. It’s pointless to say that it’s very special because every place we visited was special, the only difference was how special and in what way. The main feature on this beach is the small chunks of ice that wash on the shore (how these chunks get there, will be explained on Day 3). The contrast between the ice and the black sand is awesome and at first I thought that the black sand was particular to this beach… but as I learned later, black sand is the norm. Which you will also find out in the coming posts!
I found it very difficult to start shooting here, I’ve never seen anything like it so I was just simply overwhelmed. I came with the assumption that I would be doing most of my work with the wideangle but I just couldn’t find anything that a) properly worked with a wide angle b) didn’t include another photographer in the frame. Magnus, our trip leader, calmed me down and when I got back to my senses, I switched to the normal zoom and walked a bit further down the beach to find my own spot. After that, the biggest challenge was to stay far enough from the waves, but then a rogue wave caught me and washed over my feet and sprayed some sea water the camera as well. And then the panic – the camera started malfunctioning (nevermind that my feet were wet)! It just locked the focus and then refused to do anything else. I could still take a picture, but I couldn’t adjust any settings or re-focus. Disaster! But by then the sun had come up so we drove to a new spot to catch the light, Fjallsárlón which is a glacial lagoon with small icebergs floating the water with mountains and the glacier (Fjallsjökull, which is a glacier tongue of Vatnajökull) in the background.
The camera had dried off a little bit when we got there, and then started functioning again, to my great relief. Two lessons learned: 1) watch out! 2) bring a second camera (I did have a second camera but only with the 40-150mm zoom on it). I could still hear a grinding sound in the wheels, but after a while even this disappeared when the salt got slowly ground to dust as I used the camera.
When the light got boring, we drove back to Hali to get some breakfast, then it was a 2-hour rest break and we were back on the road. The target was Sultartungnajökull (another glacier tongue of Vatnajökull) which took us so high up in the mountains that we reached fresh snow. These mountains are rising straight from the sea so they have the appearance of being higher than anything in Sweden, and of course they have a completely different character than any domestic mountain I’m familiar with.
On the way up, we had our first mishap which luckily turned out to be the only mishap, some malfunctioning cameras not included. One of the cars (we’re travelling in two Nissan Pathfinders) had a flat tire, but of course these 4×4’s are equipped with proper spares so it was just a matter of changing it and no worries. And this really was the best possible to time and place to have a flat – it was warm and sunny and it was so early in the day that we were in no hurry to get anywhere. We could even joke about it: How many photographers does it take to change a tire? 9 – one who changes, and 8 who photographs him!
The sky remained stubbornly blue so the sunset wasn’t interesting. But what was all the more interesting was the prospect of shooting some aurora, so we drove to Hali for dinner and then back to Fjallsárlón to hopefully catch some beautiful aurora being reflected in the lagoon. But we weren’t so lucky, the aurora was visible but it was not special (a lot of people in the group had not seen or photographed aurora before so it was maybe more special to them than to me) but when I took my first frame, I saw something that made me giddy with excitement. There was a red glow in the horizon and I can tell you 100% it’s not man-made light pollution. Any guesses?
Bárðarbunga! It is about 90 km from our location and the camera sensor is catching the lava glow!! And when you knew that it was there, you could see it with naked eye as well. It was so cool that it was impossible to be disappointed about the aurora!
I don’t even know how to describe these places… they are all of them such places that I’ve never seen the like of, they are all amazing and beautiful, so I will let the pictures to do the talking.
And yes, I know I said that I would keep my texts short. But believe me – this is the short version!
