I've been following the YouTube photographer Thomas Heaton for a while now, and not just because his first name. He, like me, loves being outdoors. Unlike me, he manages to take some amazing pictures almost every week, and shares them in videos with the rest of the world. When he announced that he'll arrange a workshop to Iceland, I was hooked. It took me a few hours to check the dates and decide if I want to go; at that point the first workshop was already full. Luckily for me, Thomas and Thor (the local arranger) had decided to do two workshops back-to back. So, I got a spot for the second one. Whew!
Funnily enough, much faster to get to Iceland than to get to Bergen.
After months of agonizing what to bring with me on the trip, the day finally arrived. I packed my two bags into the car and headed for Helsinki. Two short flights later, I was in Keflavik airport outside of Reykjavik, Iceland. The way the workshop was organized was that Thor and Thomas would pick everyone up from their hotel on Monday morning. We would then drive out into the wilderness where we'd spend 5 days and 4 nights camping, after which we'd be dropped off in Reykjavik again. I had thought of spending an extra day in the city to see the sights and maybe go out on a whale or puffin tour, but after seeing the ridiculous hotel prices I decided not to; the tour itself, while not not unreasonable, was expensive enough on its own. I did have a few hours on Sunday to look around though, so I took a stroll through the harbour area to look around before heading to the Fish Company for some proper dining :)
Small boat harbour entrance.
Concert house detail.
Some jellyfish in the harbour.
View from the hotel on Monday morning. Cloudy? meh, it'll be fiiine.
So, on Monday morning, I was picked up at the designated bus stop and met Thomas, Thor and the rest of the clients. Wasting no time, we headed to the south east, towards Landmannalaugar, a camping site in the middle of the highlands. The volcano Hekla is only 30 kilometers distant, and Eyjafjallajökull isn't that far either.
Wait, is that hill smoking?? Oh yeah, Iceland.
Hills, good, good.
Cloud-covered Hekla.
After a brief lunch we stopped at our first photography destination, the Háifoss waterfalls. Yes, we started taking photos before reaching the camp. We are landscape photographers, try stopping us ;)
Háifoss is actually two waterfalls, flowing from a relatively flat steppe down a 128 meter ravine. When we arrived, the sun was high in the sky which meant that the light wasn't at it's best. Still, everyone set up their tripods and took out their filters. Getting a good composition is a bit tricky at the location since the viewpoint is so close to the waterfall; most of us had to shoot a panoramic to get the main waterfall and the downstream river in the same shot. Me, having an ultrawide, could get it in one shot, but only just.
Walking down from the parked van to the falls
Landscapers shouldn't be afraid of heights.
My first proper shot from the trip, I was a happy bunny :) 8-stop filter, 10mm / f8 / 2.5 sec.
After an hour or so we continued toward our camp site, deeper in the highlands. None of us had really any idea what to expect, but Thor didn't let us down. The ride was very bumpy, and we had to cross a small river to get there, it was definitely worth it:
Our 5-star accomondations.
With our tents set up, we started planning for the night. See, landscape photographers are a bit strange. Ideally, we want to be awake when the best light is visible. That is typically during sunset and sunrise. During summer in the Nordics that's around 11pm and 3 am, meaning the plan was to photograph the sunset, stay awake until sunrise to utilize the light night, and go to sleep sometime after sunrise. In addition, Thomas had a very specific plan he shared with us for sunset. On the top of a nearby mountain.
Up there.
I say a mountain, but it is more of a hill. Being from Finland though, that 300m ascent is something I have to drive at least 5 hours for here. Either it was a tough climb or I'm out of shape, but we did get to the top. More about that, storms, pink sunrises, and getting stuck in the highlands in later posts :)