I'm here to tell you about a little place called Iceland. If you've spent any time at all on Instagram, you've likely seen all sorts of scenes from Iceland. Like-fetching, follower-getting, cliché wanderlusty pics of people out there, living their best life ever (hopefully better than yours). Well, this is my turn at that same story...
STAFAFELL RIVER STUDY
SPIRE AT REYNISFJARA
BTS (that's Behind The Scenes).
All those people came to watch me take photos...and look at rocks.
ROB IN RAINSUIT STUDY IV, Reyinsfjara.
Anyway...
Late last August, my buddy Rob Larson, who I attended art school with in Pittsburgh, and I found some wickedly cheap flights to Reykjavik, which we couldn't pass up. We'd been talking about Iceland for like a decade, but it was always unrealistically expensive to get there. So, we booked these cheapo flights, which even included a seat to sit in, found a sweet car, charted our course, reserved a few spots along the route to sleep (which cost almost as much as my flight), and hoped for the best.
A few weeks later, we were aboard the plane, headed northeast...FAR northeast.
I had ordered up 100 sheets of film for this three and a half day whirlwind trip. To put that into perspective, I usually shoot about 100 sheets of film a year. But, I wanted to be safe, and a few extra sheets of film doesn't really take up a lot of room. This was a trip I've dreamed about for 20 years, after all...
SKAFTAFELL GLACIER DETAIL
The end of the first day, we took a dirt road to this one little lagoon that a glacier feeds in to, and I made one of my favorite images of the trip, SKAFTAFELL GLACIER DETAIL. This was a hike to a spot where I felt good about a composition. Set up the camera, with literally one sheet of film left loaded for that day. One chance, so make it count. It was so dark out, the exposure ended up running four minutes on 400 speed film, and I kept arbitrarily adding time to the exposure, as it kept getting darker.
I didn't really know what to expect from Iceland. I mean...it was August, and like a million degrees at home. Would it rain? Would it snow? Would it be super windy? Wind and large format photography DO NOT mix. Would I be able to get photographs because of all of the above? In case you're unfamiliar with how working with large format cameras works, it's like the old adage of walking uphill to school both ways, but instead of snow, it's deep mud. Your book bag weighs as much as your little brother, and when you FINALLY get to school, instead of getting to use a calculator on your math problems, you're forced to use a slide rule (we got to the Moon with a slide rule, by the way). I guess the usage of the word "forced" there might be a bit harsh, as truthfully, I love working with my slide rule of a camera, and find I work much, much more diligently as a photographer with it over having a digital camera in my hand.
So...there we were; Iceland...and all I had brought was a box camera and a few sheets of film.
Deep in the bowels of Seljalandsfoss. It was a surreal experience to stand behind this waterfall. Very primal. Recommended. SELJALANDSFOSS DETAIL II was made of the water cascading in the far right of this panoramic. Yes, the camera and I got soaked.
SELJALANDSFOSS DETAIL II
If you look behind me, you'll notice a LOT of wet tourists. I was a dry tourist, but I used the hill in the foreground to hide those tourists, and balance my composition of the falls.
SELJALANDSFOSS DETAIL I
Upon landing in Reykjavik at 5:00am, after sleeping maybe three minutes on the plane (no matter how hard I try, I cannot sleep on planes), we grabbed our 2017 Hyundai Sadness, and hit the road for what would be the most sleep-deprived trip of my life (this, coming from a father of three).
After doing some research online, and looking at satellite imagery, which I actually do a lot of my location scouting from, Rob and I had charted a course, which would take us from the airport in the south west corner of the island, along the southern coast, and out to the fjords on the south eastern corner of the island. We would back track our way back, giving us the opportunity to visit a few spots twice, and ad different times of the day. It was going to be a haul, though. In the three and a half days we spent there, we covered nearly a thousand miles, shooting from dawn until into the night, then driving to the next bed we had booked for a few short hours of sleep.
Night one, we stayed in this little cabin. We had half of it, and shared a bathroom with a French couple. Almost enough room for our two camera bags and bag of clothes. $240.
Night two, Rob modeling our lovely barrel of laughs. These little abodes were pretty cool...literally. We couldn't get the heater to warm it up much. $190.
I've always kind of considered myself a bit of a geology nut. I don't know anything about it, really, but I'm fascinated by different layers of things. Maybe that's why I like cake. The landscape in Iceland is different around every corner. Always something new and different. It's pretty wild, actually. I wish I knew more about rocks than I do, but maybe I'll start taking night classes, or something.
BUTTE, KÁLFAFELL. Some kid was flying his drone above this butte, out in the middle of nowhere. Nothing is sacred...
SPIRE AT LAEKJAVIK
Black sand, beachez!
Waiting for those pesky contrails to blow out of my way...
JÖKULSÁRLÓN SHORE STUDY I
BTS of JÖKULSÁRLÓN SHORE STUDY I. My tripods go through Hell. They spend a good deal of their lives in salt water, and for this one, I dug pits for each leg to sit in, so I could get the camera as low as possible.
Where can a guy get an ice cube around here?!?!
JÖKULSÁRLÓN SHORE STUDY III
Speaking of ice cubes, this photo of a piece of ice that looks like a chicken is the only good iPhone photo I've ever taken. True story. #nofilter
So...I don't know where this story ends, but I'm running out of words, and the photographs have all been made. You can click on that tab top left there that says ICELAND to see the whole collection of photographs from the trip. Thanks for stopping by!
Somewhere in the midwest...
The world's coolest outhouse.
ZISSOU. OUT.