One of the most anticipated and exciting events of my last trip to Iceland was the scheduled super moon that I had hoped would coincide with clear skies whilst I was in the highlands of Iceland. As luck would have it we were blessed with absolutely perfect conditions and just about ideal light under the midnight sun. My friend Antony and I hiked up to the top of one of Landmannalaugar’s highest peaks where we were able to watch and photograph the rising super moon set against the incredible rhyolite mountains with spectacular light. I have lost track of the number of times I have been to this location now – but this was only the second time I have ever experienced such magical light in the highlands.
Category: Iceland
August 2014 Photograph of the Month: Puffin Landing
Due to recent travels I am more than a few weeks late with updating my photograph of the month for both August and September. I hope to get to September in the next few days; but in the meantime my photograph of the month for August is of an Atlantic Puffin I photographed at Ingólfshöfdi in Iceland on my first Ultimate Iceland Summer Workshop in July this year. Photographed with the 600mm F4L IS MKII Canon lens on the 1DX during driving rain and wind I used a shutter speed of 1/1000th of a second with a wide open aperture to partially freeze the action. Puffins are like missiles in flight and even at 1/1000th of a second there is blur in the furiously flapping wings. I could easily have raised the ISO further and frozen the entire Puffin, but I decided after some experimentation on the day that I really liked the sense of movement created in the image with the motion blur in the wings. In this instance the strong wind worked in my favour as it made landing on the cliff edge difficult for the Puffins which forced them to slow down earlier than usual. This photograph was taken just a fraction of a second before this Puffin landed on the cliff edge. The image is full frame and uncropped.
Testimonial from Jaime Dormer – Iceland Ultimate Summer Workshop 2014
“Hi Josh, I just wanted to say that I have done a lot of workshops and photography trips with many different leaders and companies over the years. Your workshop was absolutely full on. You could not have done anymore or worked any harder. I expect that is why you have so many repeat customers and why your trips sell out so fast. Thanks for a truly fantastic trip and experience. I want to come back in Winter with you next year.” Jaime Dormer – www.jdponline.com.au
Departing for the Jewels of the Arctic Expedition 2014
Tomorrow my co-photography leader Antony Watson and I will be boarding our ship ‘Polar Pioneer’ in the north of Iceland for our 2014 Jewels of the Arctic Expedition. There is always a palpable sense of excitement in the air on the eve of an expedition departure and I am keen to get underway. I have been photographing more or less non-stop in Iceland for more than six weeks now and I am feeling the northern call for icebergs, dramatic fjords and wildlife. It has been a full year since I was last in Greenland and I find myself just itching to return to its amazing landscapes. I wrote last year in the 2013 Jewels of the Arctic trip reports about the incredible geology in Greenland, the monolithic icebergs and the unique wildlife encounters – all of which I am again eager to photograph and share with all on this trip. We have a boat full of passionate and keen photographers and I am very much looking forward to seeing what they produce over the next two weeks.
It was on this Jewels of the Arctic trip last year that I produced the short video in co-operation with Untitled Film Works on what it was like to experience a photography expedition in the Arctic. Our intention was to capture the feeling and essence of what it is like to travel on a dedicated photography expedition in the Polar regions. You can watch that video by clicking on the image below.
Over the last six weeks in Iceland my body has become accustomed to operating in the small hours under the midnight sun for the best light for photography. As we sail north from Iceland over the next few days the sun will no longer fully set and we will have near perpetual daylight. It has been my experience that the best time of day for photography this far north is late into the evening when the light becomes soft and ethereal. It will likely take me a day or so to find my sea legs once we get out of the harbour and into the Denmark Strait but I am hopeful that I can adjust quickly like last year and slip easily into ship board life with my co-photographers.
This will be the last blog post for a couple of weeks as we will have no internet once we sail out of the Isafjordur harbour. Its going to be a very exciting trip. See you in Longyearbyen in a couple of weeks…
What about the Volcano?
If you have been keeping up with recent events here in Iceland you will be aware that there is currently an orange eruption alert for the Bárðarbunga volcano at the northern end of the Vatnajökull ice cap. I have been monitoring the status of the volcano constantly via the Iceland MET website over the last week and have spent some time in relative proximity observing the ice cap but there has of yet been no clear and certain indication that an eruption is about to occur. Presently there is no evidence that magma is moving toward the surface which would indicate an eruption is imminent. Things can change quickly however and should the volcano erupt whilst I am in Greenland I plan to fly back to Iceland to make the most of the photographic opportunity – ash cloud permitting. For now, there is little else to do but continue to monitor the volcano’s status as the earthquake swarm continues.
Ultimate Iceland Workshops Completed
Daniel Bergmann and I have just completed our two back-to-back Ultimate Iceland workshops. During these two workshops we circumnavigated the Island twice and visited a great many of its iconic landscape locations. As one would expect we had a real mix of Icelandic weather and light that provided some fantastic opportunities for photography and I will have more to say about both these workshops in a full report here on my blog at a later date.
If you are interested in travelling and photographing in Iceland Daniel and I are running a workshop in August 2015 dedicated to photography in the Highlands and you can read more about that workshop HERE. Places are now extremely limited (only two remaining before it will be sold out). To get an idea of the sort of photographs you can make on a workshop like this please visit the Iceland Portfolios at www.jholko.com.
For now I am taking two weeks off for some personal photography with my friend Antony Watson in some of the more remote parts of Iceland before we both board our ship ‘Polar Pioneer’ for the Jewels of the Arctic Expedition. Our Jewels of the Arctic Expedition will see us sail from the north of Iceland across the Denmark Strait to Greenland where we will explore the many mountainous fjords before we sail across to the rugged coastline of Svalbard. Just as a teaser: Spitsbergen’s rugged northwest coast comprises mountains, tundra and fjords. Greenland’s remote east coast shows off the immensity of the icecap, fantastic icebergs and massive granite spires rising over 1000 metres above the fjords. We will likely see and photograph Polar Bears, Reindeer, Arctic Foxes, Walrus, Glaciers, icebergs and more. You can read the full report on the 2013 Jewels of the Arctic Expedition here on my blog.
If you are interested in travelling to the Arctic to photograph Polar Bears Daniel Bergmann and I are running an expedition in Svalbard next year dedicated to photographing the king of the Arctic and you can read more about that expedition HERE. There are only two places remaing before this expedition will be sold out.
www.WILDNATUREPHOTOTRAVEL.com 