My Favorite Place to Photograph: Iceland

Intimate Images in the Land of Fire and Ice

When I tell people I like to travel, they ask, “What is your favorite place?” Some people don’t play favorites, but I do. I fell in love with Iceland.

I retired early from the U.S. Forest Service to travel, make photographs, and enjoy a ‘walkabout’ attitude toward life. I wanted to wander the world. When my husband also retired, we took our first big post-working-life travel trip to Iceland.

While checking out photography workshops and tours, I saw many fantastic photo trips to Iceland. There was one big problem: guided tours in Iceland are expensive. We have a saying in my household, “the less we spend, the more we travel.” My wise and skilled Terrific Traveling Partner (my husband, Keith) told me, “The two of us can travel for a whole month on what it costs for a one-week photo workshop in Iceland.” He was right.

So we did it. We took a month-long road trip following Iceland’s “Ring Road.”

Before our trip, I scoped out the photo opportunities: “What cool things can we see and do in Iceland?” My Trusty Traveling Partner researched flights, weather, travel seasons, accommodations, car rentals, and routes. We traveled during the shoulder season after the crowds are gone and just before everything closes — mid-September to mid-October.

I read about photo tours, researched how to keep my equipment warm, looked for photos of popular tourist locations, and I read about how to find and photograph aurora.

We rented a car and pre-bought vouchers for a farm-stay program where Icelanders open their farm accommodations to visitors. We did a lot of homework, got our maps, gathered up our puffy down jackets, snow boots, and long underwear, and I packed a Pelican suitcase full of Nikon camera equipment.

Back then, I only took one camera body, a 6.1 Megapixel Nikon D70s. The Nikon’s DX Format CCD sensor’s only had an effective 6.1 megapixels and yield images with only a 3,008 x 2,000-pixels. Shocking at today’s standards! My lens collection included a Nikkor 50mm prime 1.8 D, an AF-S Nikkor 18–200mm 3.5–5.0 DX zoom, an AF Nikkor 60mm 2.8 micro (w/lens hood) and a Sigma EX 10–20mm D4–5.6DC super wide #2001539 (77mm) with a Tiffin UVprotector.

Our adventure started with a leisurely week-long stay in Reykjavik. We walked everywhere, visiting neighborhoods, stores, “hot pots” (geothermally heated swimming pools), art galleries, museums, and local urban scenes. It is a pleasant city for lingering, and we also enjoyed the Icelandic nightlife music scene.

Eating in restaurants was prohibitively expensive in Iceland, so we ate at gas stations and cooked whatever we could find in the “Bonus” grocery market. Home-cooked eggs and potatoes were one of our standard eats. It was tough for us to keep within our meal budget. As a note, we didn’t eat any puffins, spoiled sharks, or whales. They didn’t sound the least bit appealing, and we declared, “Only tourists would consider doing that!” We did splurge for my birthday by ordering the more palatable Iceland’s favorite dish — roasted lamb.

We explored waterfalls, glaciers, hot springs, geysers, lighthouses, fishing communities, fiords, fields, farms, volcanic cinder cones, snow-covered mountain peaks, and more waterfalls. It was all breathtaking and picture-perfect. I shot photos every day, and I couldn’t get enough.

But not everything in Iceland was immense. Bright green moss was everywhere. The larch trees were turning gold with the fall. The unique Icelandic horses were outstanding in their fields. Small red and yellow barns dotted the hillsides and would protect the sheep in the harsh winter. And, when it wasn’t raining, the daylight was spectacular for taking photographs of small details and large landscapes.

Every day, we watched the weather predictions and the nightly aurora borealis. We were nearing the end of our trip when we finally had a good forecast. I set my alarm for midnight. I got up, put on layers and layers of clothing, and went outside. First there was nothing. I reset my alarm for 2 a.m. I got up, put on layers and layers of clothing, gathered up my camera equipment, and went outside.

At first, I didn’t recognize it. The aurora images from photo workshops and tours are bright and super colorful. The moon was nearly full in the south, but I could sense movement to the north. It was more of a feeling when I first saw it. Soft, slow colors ghost through the cold of the night. I had my Nikon on my tripod, and I photographed the aurora. My images don’t look like the pictures advertising Iceland tours, but they are my aurora photographs, and it was one of the most unusual experiences in my life. Iceland felt like another planet. The unique volcanic landscape stretches on and on and on. We were on the edge of the Arctic Circle and crossing the Mid-Atlantic Ridge — the volcanic core of Iceland.

How many chances does someone get to see an active volcano? A fellow traveler gave us a tip on where we could book an affordable small plane flight over the lava flows. Using a long lens in an airplane is very challenging. I photographed lava flowing from an Icelandic volcano, but debarking the plane, I almost collapsed with motion sickness! Given a chance, I would do it all again.

The volcano was a mesmerizing fire, but oh, the ice! I was on another planet. Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon “was like no place I have ever experienced.” Glassy hunks of water gems, bigger than a house, swiftly float down a milky blue river or sit on a black pebble beach. And floating hunks of glacier ice talk. Low-frequency clunks and high-pitched crackles. I wasn’t shooting video on this trip, but it was a cold experience for all my senses: touch, sight, sound, emotional feeling, and even smell.

I still can’t afford photo tours or workshops, but one day, I will return to again photograph Iceland. Will it still be my favorite place? Some things don’t change, like fire and ice.

All photos in this article are originals by Cynthia A Whelan.

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