Over the last two years I have been working as a contributing partner to the Arctic Arts Project. The Arctic Arts project has the goal to gather a body of work over the next 36 months that reveals unique images of environmental art that currently exist within the region surrounding the arctic circle. The belief is that geographical areas that are under significant kinetic change are constantly revealing visual elements, both artistic and scientific, that may have only been witnessed globally by a few select people, if at all. It is the project’s intent to bring this unique visual kaleidoscope of ice, water, fire, tundra and fauna to the world at large, capturing the change as the aesthetics of rebirth rather than extinction. The project has continued to grow and evolve during this time and a new exhibition of work from the contributing photographers is now on display at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research – INSTAAR.
From the project director Kerry Koepping: As the University of Colorado’s oldest institute, INSTAAR has a long history of responding to pressing environmental issues. The primary focus of INSTAAR has been on polar and alpine regions, where effects of global change are especially pronounced. Research topics vary widely and include Quaternary and modern environments, human and ecosystem ecology, biogeochemistry, landscape evolution, hydrology, oceanography, and climate. The Arctic Arts Project will act as visual communicator to the research currently being conducted in the Arctic. Project Director, Kerry Koepping, and the Arctic Art’s Team of Artists will focus on bringing the visual response to this research and educating the world at large as to its findings.
The exhibition has already been lauded by more than 350 of the biggest names in Arctic Research (including many pre-eminent scientists) as being one of the finest displays of Arctic Change Visualisation that exists anywhere.
The exhibit is currently at 60+ images, and is continuing to expand by an additional 4-8 photographs over the next week including several of my own photographs from the 2015 Global Arctic Photographer of the Year award.
The second workshop will run from the 28th of August until the 6th of September 2016 and will focus on the Southern Highlands and eastern coastal regions of Iceland. Our intention on this workshop is to focus on some of the lesser known highland areas in the southern part of Iceland. We will also visit the precipitous ocean lined mountains at Stokksnes as well as vising the spectacular Laki Volcano and the world famous Jokulsarlon glacial lagoon. You can download a detailed itinerary and information PDF form for the second workshop 
We have chosen August and early September for these workshops as this is an ideal time to visit Iceland for photography. The days are still long with Sunrise around 5 a.m. and sunset just before 10 p.m. The best light for landscape photography is therefore during the evening and early morning. This means that we may have an early dinner and then head out to photograph and sometimes be out before breakfast for a morning shoot. On cloudy days we’ll have a more normal routine. What we’ll do exactly on any given day will be decided around the weather and other conditions and there will be small changes to our original plan to make the most of our time in each area.
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