I went to Iceland March 2018

In August 2017, I went on a photo adventure to Iceland sponsored by Leica  Miami. 

I returned to Iceland  in March 2018, again with Leica  Miami.  I was able to borrow a Leica SL and a 24-90mm zoom lens for the adventure (as well as an Leica M-lens adapter for the SL).  I took my own M-246 and my "Panasonic" and various M-lenses as well. I left the M-240 at home.

The last time I went to Iceland, I brought a baby goat who loved Iceland so much he just ran off without telling me or saying goodbye somewhere near Haifoss.

baby goat says hai from Haifoss.  15 August 2017. Haifoss, Iceland.

Before I left Iceland the last time, I order two new baby goats from amazon.com.

Last Christmas, I heard the tales of the Yule Lads and the Christmas Cat,  Jólakötturinn. Icelandic children are told that if they don't receive wool clothing for Christmas, Jólakötturinn may hunt them down and eat them.  Which, I suppose, is a way of assuring that your kids are appreciative of the wool socks and hats they receive as gifts for Christmas.

In the weeks leading up to the trip, I see the weather on windy.tv and see the stories on facebook pages such as the Icelandic Monitor about the airport being closed for days because of high winds, and I begin to understand the folktales of the Christmas Cat and Grýla. They are metaphors for the harsh Icelandic winters.  And they're not very subtle.

If you go to Iceland in winter without packing your wool socks, you might be eaten by the Christmas Cat.

About two weeks before I left for Iceland, WOW airlines sends me an e-mail telling me that it's my responsibility to have all my travel documents in order and that generally the expiration date on your passport should be at least 6 months after you arrive.

I look at my passport.

The expiration date is 5 months and 3 weeks after I will arrive.

day 1: Reykjavik

The night before leaving, I watch Under and Arctic Sky on my little laptop on my Netflix account.  It's a surf movie, so of course it's crazy and epic. Our surf heroes arrange to take a boat out to surf breaks in the northern most West Fjords.  The boat captain warns them over the phone, it's January, there might be some weather.

The next morning, I check in at WOW Airlines. No issues with the passport.

I arrive at Keflavík at about 4am.  I pick out the friendliest looking police officer at immigration. We exchange cheerful "good mornings."  She stamps my passport, and me and my two baby goats have made it past immigration.

Outside the bathroom at the airport, I find the first of a few emoji stations I came across while in Iceland.  Here you can give some feedback on what you've just experienced in emoji form by pressing the applicable button.


happy or not?

After some minor confusion at the FlyBus desk, I get the correct transfer ticket to Fosshotel Reykjavik and arrive in time to have a breakfast of instant oatmeal and tea, take a nap, and then get a second breakfast at the hotel restaurant.  One of the baby goats settles in next to the step-down converter and laptop



and after breakfast, I walk out for sunrise at Solfarid


28 February 2018. Reykjavik, Iceland.

And I spend the rest of the day being a tourist in Reykjavik.


Hallgrímskirkja


Hallgrímskirkja

A very small elevator will take you up to the top of the church tower.

Reykjavik from Hallgrímskirkja.


28 Feburary 2018. Harpa concert hall. Reykjavik, Iceland.


Harpa


Construction cranes near Harpa. This reminds me of Hong Kong!


Holdi House where Reagan and Gorbachev met in 1986.

day 2

Akranes

First stop at Akranes on the way to Snæfellsáss Peninsula.  Very nice light here.

1 March 2018. Akranes, Iceland.

These gnomes greet visitors at the entrance to the taller lighthouse (or are they trolls?).

You can climb up the stairs to the tall lighthouse and look around.

I found a bunch of ladybugs nearby



Also, someone is a David Bowie fan.


We could be heroes. For just one day.

Búðakirkja

A little black wooden church

Djúpalónssandur beach at Sunset

This is how you get to Arnarstapi from Reykjavik



We settle for the night at Arnarstapi

I did not go out to shoot the aurora this night.  It's always the second night that is worst with jet lag (flying 8 time zones east or west).  The little cabins we stayed in at Arnarstapi Hotel were of new construction and at one point I blamed my headache on the "new" construction scent. But it was really caffeine withdrawal, because I hadn't had any caffeine in the last 8 hours since morning on the Pacific Coast.  Ended up chewing on a piece of Run Gum at 4am and going back to bed.

Day 3: Snæfellsáss

Arnastapi sunrise

A short walk from our hotel reveals an arch along the coast


2 March 2018. Arnastapi, Iceland.

West Fjords morning stacks

Later in the morning we shot at an ocean location.  It was quite windy, perhaps 30mph winds with gusts up to 50mph.  After a while, shooting with a tripod just seemed pointless.  Shooting handheld at 400 ISO is going to be fine.





The mountains off the coast glowed all day with the most majestic cloud porn









oh, and that's our red Monster Bus in the lower right

Lunch at Ólafsvík

We drove across the mountains and at midday we ate at the Hraun Resturant at Ólafsvík.

This is our ride in Iceland for this trip... it's a little more spacious than our Monster Truck from the summer trip, although the ride can be a bit rough in the back of the bus.

Sheep's Waterfall

After lunch we just drive straight past that one famous mountain in Iceland because there are too many tour buses there at the moment and go straight to what google maps calls "Sheep's Waterfall."  I don't recall seeing any sheep there, however.

2 March 2018. Sheep's Waterfall.  Snæfellsáss, Iceland

It was about 30 degrees here, and it just briefly snowed on us.

Kirkjufellsfoss

After Sheep's Waterfall we make it back to Kirkjufellsfoss and Kirkjufell  after all the tour buses from Reykjavik have left for the day.

How we got around Snæfellsáss peninsula on day 3.

 

Day 4: On our way to Vik

Bárðar Saga Snæfellsáss Statue

My eyes watered from the cold wind as I walked to the sunrise photo shoot at Arnarstapi. A very thin line of orange light illuminated the sky just above the horizon towards the sea. I was awe-startled to find a being floating on the dark horizon.

What is that!?  That’s too big to be a person!

Bárður Snæfellsás.

This is an abbreviated version of the saga of Bárður Snæfellsás as retold to me by my WOW Airlines inflight magazine.

An extended family of half ogres and half trolls emigrated to the West Fjords of Iceland from Norway.  Ogre adolescents play rough. One day Rauðfeldur threw Helga onto a little iceberg, and a strong mountain wind blew the iceberg away from the shore.  Helga floated out into the bay.  She floated out of the bay onto the open ocean.  Helga floated all the way to Greenland, where she met Eric the Red and took a human lover.

Bárður Snæfellsás, Helga’s father, went berserk when he heard of what happened to his daughter.  He rounded up this half-brother’s sons, Sölvi, and Rauðfeldur, and pushed Rauðfeldur down a ravine and Sölvi off of a cliff.

The next day, in the sunlight, the troll on my dark horizon is stone.

3 March 2018. Bárðar Saga Snæfellsáss Statue. Arnastapi, Iceland.

Borgarnes

Just a little stop at a gas station.  Little Trees, hotdogs, and salted licorice.

When I visited Iceland last summer, I looked out the window of my flybus to see the car in the next lane over with a little tree hanging from the rear view mirror.

And I said to myself, there's one in every car.

Imagine you're are somewhere on the earth or maybe embedded in the earth and you have a globe or map on your lap.  Mathematicians have proven that there is a point on your map that corresponds to where you're at on the planet.  In Iceland this is called, "ÞÚ ERT HÉR"

Seljalandsfoss

Seljalandsfoss is a place we visited on our way back to Reykjavik on the last day of our trip last summer... just an iPhone stop last time.


3 March 2018. Seljalandsfoss , Iceland.

Walking east from the main falls with the rainbow, there are a couple of little falls along the cliff face





Further east (which I didn't get to) there is another falls, which David Farkas tells the story of from his summer trip to Iceland in 2015 (scrolls down to day 4).

Skógafoss

The next foss on our way to Vik as the light was starting to fade was Skógafoss.


3 March 2018. Skógafoss, Iceland.

To the left of this scene there is a path up to a viewing platform above the falls.

Our driver told us some stories about the hidden folk and trolls.  It turns out that there are no trolls left in Iceland or very very very few trolls.  Trolls turn to stone in the daylight, and they are not very bright.  They often forget that they turn to stone in the day light. The dawn catches them by surprise, and they turn to stone.

I think I might have seen a stone troll at Skógafoss.







I've been catching up with the History Channel's TeeVee series, "Vikings."  I've just finished the season 5 episode where Flóki discovered Asgard.  Of course, I'm shouting back at the television, "THAT'S ICELAND!"

Aurora at Kirkjufjara beach

After checking in and dinner at Icelandair Hotel at Vik, we head out to the cliffs above Kirkjufjara beach in search of Aurora.



I didn't recognize the place at first, but this was the same beach we saw puffins last summer.



In fact, I think you can see a couple of puffins in the lower left of this photo.









This is how you get from Arnarstapi to Vik

day 5

black sand beach at Vik

After breakfast we head out to the beach near Vik and catch the iconic sea stacks there.

4 March 2018. Vik, Iceland.

When the Norse first arrived in Iceland, about 25% of the island was forested.  Now only 1% of the island has trees.  Here are a few of the 1%

Aiming the camera away from the ocean... we see parts of the town of Vik 

and its red church

lava field

This lava field that we stopped at along the ring road might be about 100 years old?  Lava fields are lumpy and the have pale green moss trying to grow on them.

It's rocks and moss! Baby goat had a blast!

baby goat scampers up the rocks in the lava field

Batman Lagoon

Lagoons in Iceland are formed from the melt water from glaciers, and in the lagoon float little calved icebergs. The most well known ice lagoon in Iceland is Jökulsárlón, which we will get to soon enough.  This lagoon is Batman Lagoon.  

Now, you might wonder why, of all the costumed super-heroes, why is there a lagoon in Iceland named after Batman.  You would think it would be named after Superman.  After all, Superman has his Fortress of Solitude at the north pole.  And just like puffins and whooper swans fly south for the winter, why doesn't Superman fly south for the winter to his little Winter Palace of Solitude in Iceland?  I don't think I've seen Superman's Fortress of Solitude in Iceland... yet.  There are hiking tours that will take you up onto the glacier above the lagoon.  Maybe Superman has a fortress made of ice there.

I've been told that the reason it's called Batman Lagoon is because some scenes for one of the Batman movies was filmed here.  You may ask yourself, like I ask myself, why don't the directors of Superman movies have the imagination to film a Fortress of Solitude scene in Iceland?  I guess they just CGI it.

Whatever.

I'm am so over Hollywood.

4 March 2018. Batman Lagoon. Iceland.

At one point I mapped out the rest of the day in my mind and realized I needed to conserve my SL batteries and so I switched to the monochrome.

Jökulsárlón Ice Beach at sunset

We rushed out of the bus as the light was fading.

The ice from Jökulsárlón ice lagoon floats down the river under the bridge and washes up on the beach. 

how to get there from here on day 5:

Vatnajökull Ice Cave -- Day 6

We drove halfway to the ice cave in our big red bus, and then transferred to the Mercedes Monster Truck to go driving on the glacier.  At no point did I fear for my life as a passenger on the Monster Truck on the glacier.  We drive over volcanic sand and dirt roads and some "roads" which just consisted of ruts in the ice.  We had one thrilling moment where the strong winds pushed the Monster Truck laterally off the "road" and we're just sliding down the glacier about 40 meters before the Monster Truck was back in control again.

After we reach our destination, we get our  helmets and crampons on using the the Monster Truck as shelter from the wind, and then we walk a few hundred meters to the ice cave.  The temperature is in the teens (Fahrenheit) and the winds are around 50 mph with gusts to 70 mph? It's so cold, you can hardly think.  The cave itself offers some shelter (wind gusts 20 mph?).

In the cave, we program our cameras (mounted on tripods) to take 5 exposures with different exposure times.  Back at the hotel room we can use Lightroom to stack the 5 exposures into one photo.  And because I'm more at-ease using Capture One, I finish the photo using that program.





You can see all the photos made to create photos above (straight out of the camera as rendered by Capture One version 11) here.

Day 7

Jökulsárlón Ice Beach at Sunrise

Overnight there was a light dusting of snow which made everything we shot on day 7 really pretty.

6 March 2018. Jökulsárlón, Iceland.

There wasn't a lot of ice on the beach this morning

As I headed back to the bus, looking at the patterns in the volcanic black sand and snow, it occurs to me that I ought to take some Dave photos.

Breakfast at Hali Country Hotel

After eating breakfast at the Hali Country Hotel, I rush out with my Panasonic and take a few photos before we got to get back on the bus.

If you have grown up in the Pacific Northwest, in the Willamette Valley, you will know a "snow day" to mean that the snowfall accumulates to one eighth of an inch or more and it is cold enough to persist on the ground for one or two hours or "stick". Long enough for school to be canceled for the day, WHOOPEE!  It happens maybe once every other year.

Now, if you've grew up on Pennsylvania or Western Massachusetts or North Dakota or Minnesota you'll find the concept of a Northwest snow day totally ridiculous.

If however you grew up in Hawaii, you might find snow days totally painful.  

It's not often I press the shutter button and write the caption of the photo in my head at the same time, but this is one of those times,

snow day!


snow day. 
6 March 2018. Hali Country Hotel. South Coast. Iceland.

On the ring road

We stop along the Ring Road between Hali Country Hotel and Fjallsárlón.

Baby Goat had a grand ole time playing in the snow here.  

A goat name Alice. 
6 March 2018. South Coast, Iceland.

There's a race horse in Hong Kong called Snowhooves.  Neither I nor baby goat know that a snow hoof is.  Baby goat has pointy goat hooves that sink into the snow.  Sometimes baby goat wishes he had wide fluffy snow lynx feet so he could walk on top of the snow.

Fjallsárlón 

The next sárlón we visited was Fjallsárlón.

You walk up a ridge from the parking area to look down on the ice lagoon.





If you walk far enough to the east, you'll find a row of cement monoliths, which I imagine used to hold up a bridge.

On the way to Stokksnes

On the way to Stokksnes along the ring road.

Stokksness

even the tiniest people visit Iceland during the winter

6 March 2018. Stokksness, Iceland.

this is how you get from here to there on day 7

day 8

One last breakfast at Hali Country Hotel 

and we're on are way back to Vik with a stop at 

Jökulsárlón Ice Lagoon

The lagoon

7 March 2018. Jökulsárlón, Iceland.

and it's outlet to the beach under the bridge doesn't seem to be a crowded with ice as it was last summer.

Now this was curious.

It's of some sort of model/fashion shoot of a woman in a over-sized red sweater and snow boots with the lagoon and mountains as a back drop. It's 30 F-ing degrees (F for Fahrenheit)!  I saw something similar on a previous morning at Hali Country Hotel.  A woman in her little red dress and a photographer.  I was too dumbfounded to take a photo... that and I only had my 28mm point-n-shoot with me and I wasn't bold enough to run 100 meters down the hill to take a photo of the photo shoot.   I don't know if this was just some photographers personal project, or if it was a professional fashion shoot for Geysir or Cintamani

Hofskrikja Turf Church

Everyone's favorite turf church.

7 March 2018. Hofskrikja, Iceland

Well, if it isn't your favorite, it's baby goat's favorite.

baby goat chills at the last turf church in Iceland

Lunch

Lunch time trees at Systrakaffi.  A few more of the one percent. Some of these are still alive





It is also lunch time for horses (so we didn't get any close up photos of the curious horses because they were busy eating). Also, more of the one percent.

Fjaðrárgljúfur Canyon

This was a really cool place.  The light was a bit contrasty which made it a bit of a challenge.  I imagine during the summer or on a day where the arc of the sun is in alignment with the line of the canyon, this would be really cool.






7 March 2018. Fjaðrárgljúfur Canyon, Iceland.























Also, it's a good thing I didn't have to poop here because pooping isn't allowed here.

Black Sand Beach at Vik at Sunset

One last time on the beach near Vik.



In that one episode of Vikings, I think Flóki washed up on the beach about 800 meters from here.








Icewear

This is how we get from here to there on day 8

Day 9

Dyrhólaey 

Our last full day in Iceland, we make our way back to Reykjavik. Just about 20 minutes down the road, we're at Dyrholaey Nature Reserve



to see those iconic sea stacks at a different angle



and see the flat plain of snow

Geysir

There are actually several geysers here.  I'm not sure which geyser is the geyser for which all geysers are named after. But the one that goes off every 5-10 minutes or so is pretty spectacular.


8 March 2018. Geysir, Iceland.









This also is a good place for lunch and buying wool goods from Geysir.  Also, our bus was under Odin's protection during photos and lunch.

Gulfoss 

The next and final foss is the mother of all fosses, Gulfoss is spectacular. And in March is half-frozen.

how to get there from here on day 9:

Day 10 -- Reykjavik

Imagine a sine curve.  A sine curve can represent many things, but in this instance, it represents the length of the day as time passes during the year. At its peak is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. And at it's trough is the shortest day of year, the winter solstice.  In between those dates are the spring and autumn equinoxes, where the length of the day changes quite rapidly (the slope of the sine curve is at its maximum). So on March 9, just on the winter side of the spring equinox, the sunrise is about an hour earlier than it was 10 days ago when I first arrived in Reykjavik.

After breakfast, on my last day in Iceland, I go out at sunrise.  It's sunny and clear this time.

If you've seen the movie Thor: Ragnarok, you may recognize Valhalla in the architecture of Hallgrímskirkja.




9 March 2018. Hallgrímskirkja, Iceland.

There's a photographer with his tripod just on the other side of Leifr Erikson, waiting patiently for the sun to rise, perfectly squared up with the church.

How do you go about making photos of iconic places?  Maybe the shot to get isn't the shot perfectly squared up at sunrise. Maybe the shot to get is to set up your tripod a little ways back on the sidewalk across the street from Leifr off to an angle. You wait until the sun rises an hour or so and place yourself so the sun is just on the left edge of the church tower, shooting at f/16 or f/22 so it's a starburst.  I didn't get that shot, either.  Maybe next time.



The English language has borrowed about a billion thousand words form Old Norse.  I believe this translates to "Southgate."  Maybe there's a south gate in your town.



I know there's a Northgate in Seattle..




if ducks and swans can get along, why can't all?


9 March 2018. Reykjavik, Iceland.


A couple of months ago, I learned that whooper swans winter in Ireland.