Out of the mist
When driving through the rolling hills of Iceland, you constantly see horses grazing peacefuly. When you look closer, you realize that these are not quite like the horses in the rest of the world. They are Icelandic horses, a breed developed only in Iceland. They are smaller than normal horses with quite long hair, generally long-lived and hardy. They are also extremely friendly and most of the times when you stop next to a farm fence they will come and check you out.
During my second night in Iceland, while still in Reykjavik, I went for a drive around the countryside taking photos at Gullfoss until about 1am. On the way back to Reykjavik, the road winds through a very active geothermal area and because the difference between the air temperature (which was about 5 degrees Celsius) and the ground temperature there is this constant mist floating around. As I was coming around a corner I saw these horses appearing like out of a fairytale, engulfed in mist and I just had to stop. I got quite a few shots like below with them in the distance and a few closeups, which I’ll post in the next weeks.
This photograph is maybe not as impressive as the landscape ones, but for me, it’s one of my favourite shots I took in Iceland, purely because of the moment it reminds me of.
Europe, Iceland
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Icelandic lighthouse #1
During my trip through Iceland, I spent a lot of time exploring each road around the fjords in the Snæfellsnes Peninsula (in the West part of the country) and in the Westfjords (a huge, wild region in the North-West of the country). I did most of this exploring late in the day when the 3-4 hours Icelandic sunsets were at their best.
Most of the big peninsulas have some beautiful lighthouses at their tips and although I don’t think these lighthouses get much use during the summer (since it’s daylight for 24 hours), they are beautiful things to photograph, particularly with the sunset light hitting them straight on. There’s even an Icelandic Lighthouse Society, that looks after the preservation of these beautiful landmarks.
I have about 4 or 5 shots with Icelandic lighthouses that I will be posting over the coming weeks and this particular lighthouse is at the tip of the Ondverdarnes peninsula, the westernmost tip of the Snæfellsnes Peninsula. As you can see from rolling over the “Show original” button, the light was so nice in the original that I didn’t do much to the image in post-processing except for a few curves for the sky and a slight desaturation of the whole image.
As always I would love to hear what you think about the photograph (good or bad).
Europe, Iceland
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Video tutorial – Shooting bracketed images
Following my recent workshop at GeekFest a few weeks ago, a few of the regular readers of the blog have asked me to do a video-tutorial while I setup for shots. So what better time than my recent trip to Iceland to do it?!
Because it’s the first video tutorial I’ve put together, you’ll have to excuse the fact that it’s quite basic, but I’m hoping that following your comments I will improve on the next one. The tutorial shows you how I shot the image below, taking 5 braketed exposures with a 1E.V. step.
Europe, Iceland, Tutorials
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