03.06.2018

Iceland is nowadays a paid visit if you are a serious landscape photographer. Waterfalls, endless widths, a rough climate and loneliness (in a positive sense) offer this remote island in the northern Atlantic ocean. It is the biggest volcanic island with over 30 active vulcano systems. The climate is very rough but not as cold as you might think thanks to the Gulf Stream. We had an extremely variable weather, from snow to sunshine we had everything and that literally every minute. On average we had a temperature of 8 to 10 degrees Celsius, what isn’t that bad.

The weather can thwart any plans.

In my camera bag I had all the stuff what you can read in my article (photography equipment). One small addition that I had is the teleconverter TC-20E III and my remote controller for the D850. I was very satisified with this setup or in other words I cannot imagine a better one for landscape photography, especially for Iceland. The most important thing is that all your stuff is weather resistant because of the weather changes. The most important item for me was the cleaning cloth for the front lenses because there were water drops on lens time by time. Quiet annoying, but OK, it’s Iceland.

A mountain in the far distance.

It was impressively windy. We never experienced such strong winds and squalls. Unfortunantely we couldn't use the drone as often as we'd like. I had to do one emergency landing because of a too strong headwind and I crashed it against the car. But everything without big damages, just one propeller was broken. So we were sitting on charged batteries many times but couldn't take off so often. I had my Phantom 4 Pro with me and even an spotted Inspire 2 pilot had problems caused by the wind.

Several minutes before we had rain.

One of the classical Iceland views: Mt. Kirkjufell and waterfalls.

We were the whole days on the road and returned every evening to the hotel, close to Reykjavik. Iceland has only a population of 350.000 people. With a total area of 102.000 square kilometers there is only a density of 3.2. This is amazing, we saw more tourists than inhabitants. When you drive through the highlands (the island center) you are in nowhere. Sometimes there are some houses in the distance. But all in all you are alone.

A windy stopover to take some photographs. We've done this a lot.

The Gullfoss. One of the most impressive waterfalls on Iceland.

To get ahead, a car is indispensable. There are bus lines on Iceland but for waiting on the bus is a waste of time, because of the long distances. The maximum speed limit is 90 km/h what is a good travel speed, not too slow and not too fast to miss something. The roads invite you to drive faster than allowed but I wouldn't recommed it because there are speed traps and not too few.

A rainy day at the coast of Arnarstapi, on the peninsula Snæfellsnes.

Snæfellsnes offers a big variety of landscapes also these volcanic formations. Snæfellsnes is located in the western of Iceland and 90 minutes away from Reykjavik.

There is so much diversion of the landscape. There are volcanic stone formations, where you have to be careful if you go in there, because the edges could be very sharp and harmful if you fell. Then there a beautiful fjords where the ocean flows into sourrounded by black mountains and black stones. We decided us to climb a mountain spontaneous with a fantastic view as reward. The sense of distance deceives, if you see something in the far or you estimate the height of a mountain then it is really far away or really high.

Close to Kirkjufell: one of the climbable mountains.

A peak of an opposing mountain. Took this at 200 mm.

I hope I've been eager for more, part II will follow. I made over 1500 photos, so many HDR shots and long exposures and I need a lot of time for editing, but I think this is justified when you see the results here and which will follow. So stay tuned for the next shots and more experiences which I could collect during this trip.

Our second time on the coast of Arnastapi, this time with a better weather.