Epic Iceland

Epic Iceland

Its been a couple of months since my two back to back Iceland Photography Tours in November 2017.  To say they were amazing would be a massive understatement. When it comes to running these tours, nine times out of ten my clients number one aim is to see the aurora dancing across the sky and its up to me to get them into the best possible position to view it.
Generally I think its important to get off to a good start and get some green on the first night or two, this helps set the tone for the week and is brilliant for client morale. The first day generally has the most driving of the trip driving 3-4 hours to the accommodation (not including stopping for photos along the way). Normally its dark by the time we get to our house for the week but it also means it gives us plenty of opportunity to hunt for some clear skies, given it being the first night we are just happy to get the aurora, be it at a popular landmark or just a simple side of the road shot.
Luckily, on the first night of both tours, we managed some clear skies on the way to our house, and were greeted to some amazing displays, just from the side of the road... First night, we'll take it!! Look below... not a bad start eh???

Side of the road, South Iceland

The first night of any Iceland tour, we'll take some green, wherever we can to get off the mark, and after that the real planning starts. Everyone wants the aurora at the beauty spots, and its up to me to keep a good eye on stats and charts throughout the week to give us the best possible chance to get into our positions at the right place at the right time! In fairness when you do get off to a good start and you get the lights so early on a tour it really is a huge sense of relief, and it does take the pressure off slightly.
We were so lucky to have 5 amazing nights of aurora on both trips in November. Below is a shot of the famous Kirkjufell mountain only an hour after sunset when it wasn't even fully dark.

Kirkjufell aurora

This was actually taken on the last night of the first tour. We were cutting it fine to get back to the airport for our flight as we knew the mountain passes had some snow, but we knew we had a veichle capable of getting us through. At Kirkjufell we knew we had about an hour window for shooting potential aurora as the cloud (as you can see the cloud bank in the background) started to roll in.

Kirkjufell lower falls

During sunset we did manage to get a little bit of light, and this is a shot I got of the lower falls at Kirkjufell. A couple of weeks later this whole place was actually frozen, so cold in fact barely any water was flowing. It really is one of Icelands best places, and you can see why some call it The Witches Hat mountain.

Vestrahorn reflections

Vestrahorn aurora

Probably my favourite place in the whole of Iceland is this beast above... Vestrahorn mountain, the complete opposite side of Iceland to Kirkjufell, almost an 8 hour drive in fact. Apart from how great it looks, another amazing thing about Vestrahorn is that it is amazing for seascape, reflections (as above), sunrise, sunset and aurora (also above), this place has it all. 

Glacier Lagoon reflections

One of the main reasons people come to Iceland is to see the beautiful Glacier Lagoon. It can be difficult to get this on a calm day but while we were there we got treated to eerily calm conditions. It was so calm you could constantly hear the ice cracking. On the second last night of the second tour we waited here for hours with 100% clear skies and zero wind to see what was supposed to be a decent night for the aurora and it never happened. To be fair we couldn't complain after some of the displays we had over the two weeks, but this is mother nature at work, unpredictable.

Reynisfjara

Reynisdrangar

You just can't go to Iceland and not bring your clients to see these amazing sea stacks at Reynisdrangar in Vík! The beauty of these sea stacks, is that they can be shot form both sides of the hill on two separate beaches, again its a great place to shoot both sunrise and sunset. The top shot is sunrise from Reynisfjara and is a long exposure to capture the water movement, to make an interesting foreground interest, and the bottom one, sunset from the beach at Reynisdrangar, is a faster shutter speed to capture the movement and wave as it came towards the camera.

Skogafoss

One of my favourite shots from the two trips was of Skogafoss, the amazing waterfall pictured above.  This is actually a blend of two images (One at 20 seconds, iso 3200, f2.8 for the sky, and the second at 4 minutes, iso 1000, f4 for the foreground).
 The reason for this was to create a cleaner foreground with minimum noise in the image.  I'd have liked to do about 7/8 minutes at iso 640, only it was too difficult because of cars coming in and out of the car park, and I didn't want any light in the foreground. Skogafoss is an impressive place at any time of the day/night, standing at sixty metres high, but to get such a magical display of aurora over it on a crystal clear night is just amazing. All I can say is I had four very happy clients and they had one very very happy guide.

All in all these were two amazing tours and thankfully all clients were extremely happy. I'm going to end this on a shot I managed to capture of a client of mine, Brian, from a distance. He only booked the trip two weeks before, and standing on the top of a small hill, he had no clue I was taking the shot which made it more special. He managed to stay fairly still for ten seconds, staring and pointing his camera towards a particular part of the sky that had erupted in colour.

Amazing aurora display, Skaftafell Glacier

We currently have just two spaces left on our six day Iceland Photography Tour from the 30th of October to the 5th of November 2018... Full info and booking in link below or email us at bernard@bglandscapetours.ie for any info or questions you may have.

https://www.bglandscapetours.ie/Home/tourDetails?tourID=59