Ice gets up early
Home sweet home…with bed soft bed.
I’m not a morning person. “Grab hold of your attitude” I admonish myself, and try to remember the satisfaction of looking at the clock after a productive day and finding it’s only 11:00.
First visit, most of the chunks were anonymous white, luckily a couple ice cubes and the big blues on the point were friends
That prospect was paler than the predawn light when Ben’s cell phone beeped its excessively merry tune into the stuffy air of our three-bed room at the Gerði Guesthouse.
It didn’t take too long to remember where I was, and that if it was raining, I could go back to sleep. One step spanned the modest room and the photographic shrapnel of tripods, cases, and battery chargers in it. My sleep-soggy fingers parted the blinds to find…stillness. No rain, no falling snow, no car-tipping wind. Yet. The horizon was nearly identifiable above the gray Norwegian Sea, and the ground lay immaculate after an overnight snowstorm.
Fine then. Let’s go.
Sunset visit, in the blasting wind
Getting up that early for something stupid like starting the dryer, letting the dogs out, or feeding one’s children, that’s difficult, but we had a more rewarding task at hand: photographing the hunks of glacial ice that lay on the black sand beach below Jökulsarlon, a short drive away.
It was still difficult to tell where exactly the sun would rise as my oversized boots pushed through the top snow into the volcanic sand below. Somewhere south. But I’d already decided where I would splay my tripod, so I tucked my chin to my chest and pushed into the Arctic wind.
On our first visit, the day before, the ice was gorgeous, but the flat light of afternoon did us no favors. Then it started raining. That evening we went back for sunset, but the punitive winds had coated everything in black grit, including the ice, the lenses, and our retinas. Now, before dawn, everything was snow-globed into softness by the storm, and even more than the wind, we struggled against high expectations for pink-lit ice as Arctic rollers frothed in the background.
The problem with Iceland is that it’s infested with photographers, and sunset had been a mad dash to get in front of everyone else and their DSLRs. Even before dawn we were just three more among the crowd, whose eyes flicked from their own camera settings to assess the value of competitors’ gear. My friend nudged me, “See that guy’s tripod? $7,000.”
Chasing the sunset, trying to find a frame not littered with other photographers; it was cut-throat.
I guess it’s time to admit something. “Before dawn”? Sunrise in Iceland in early March is about 8:30. teeheehee.
I set up. Thought better of it. Moved. Got chased off by a rogue wave. Again. Photographers are a restless sort, and the ocean is always a capricious neighbor. Nothing in my viewfinder matched my advance vision, and what might have been a good capture was ruined by a tripod-tipping gust of wind, but screw it, I was wandering a snow-caked beach in Iceland while the waves rocked the glacier’s chipped teeth; photos or no, I was having fun.
Wreckage of our ice games
The vagaries of framing brought me into proximity with my two co-travelers, and it occurred to me that even better than waiting for the sun to rise would be to make a giant flat snowplate, throw it in the air, and all try to pelt it with snowballs before it shattered on the sand.
We were so close. All four times. Forthcoming frostbite forbade a fifth fling.
I actually decreased the blue in this pre-dawn light.
It wasn’t distraction, because we had six eyes on the job, but somehow the sun just sort of seeped past, smuggled above the horizon in an oceanic haze, and our pristine images never quite…crystallized. But that was okay, I had a few hundred exposures to choose from for this blog, a good time, and if we drove fast enough, we’d still be in time for breakfast back at the hotel.
And it wasn’t even 11:00 yet.
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- One eye on the camera, one eye on the surf
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- Do you see mermaids, elephant seals? Other?
I can relate to this. I watch the sunrise at Uluru every day and tourists are so cut throat! It’s not uncommon to see them jump the barrier and walk onto the delicate sandune ecosystem just for that perfect shot. I find no matter how good your camera or skill, sunrise always looks better through your own eyes than through the camera lense. I can only imagine how this time in Iceland must have looked because the photos are amazing! They remind me there is more to life than red sand!
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hahahaha Savage tourists! (It’s actually not funny what some people do when they don’t feel responsible for a place, but for now…they’re funny.) I agree, the in-person vision is almost always far better than the recorded image (perhaps the one exception I know will be in a blog soon). I never realized just how incredible the human eye is, until I got into photography. It’s actually kind of a problem, since the eye at the moment sees so much, then the memory adds some of that to the image, so it’s kind of hard to tell which of one’s shots will be worthwhile for others, and which are good to oneself by virtue of the attached memory.
And I love that you watch sunrise at Uluru every day! It’s still on my list, and knowing you’re doing that puts a big smile on m’face!
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Hard to get a shot that matches reality, but the light on some of yours looks like a pretty respectable effort. Looks pretty breathtaking from here.
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Nothing came out as well as I’d hoped, but it’s Iceland, so you’re bound to find something pretty. I have an ice cave post coming up, with photos of mine that just didn’t do the place justice, so I’ll link to one of my companion’s flickr stream. Keep an eye out for that, he has great ones from this beach too.
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Will do.
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Makes me wanting to go to Iceland, which is on my list of travels anyways.
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I’d recommend Iceland to anyone, but if you’re into photography (especially landscape) then it’s more of an obligation. 😉
(Fair warning, it’s also the most expensive country I’ve ever visited.)
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Very interesting, but obviously challenging, subject matter. It’s always difficult to meaningfully suggest doing anything differently without seeing the lay of the land in person. And it’s particularly tough when a location is crawling with other photographers (never any fun).
Your description of the rogue wave brought back memories of my experience on a windy day last fall on Lake Superior’s southern shore when I, along with my tripod and the rest of my gear, just barely avoided being swamped.
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I think the biggest thing I should have done differently was bracket and try some HDRs. I didn’t do that since A:I don’t have any software for it, and B:I was operating with a finite amount of memory. Next time, though. (I got back and immediately ordered two more SD cards.)
Those rogue waves are deadly enough as it is, adding a bunch of expensive camera gear to the equation ups the ante! (Good to know one needs to watch out for that on the Great Lakes too, I might have been naive enough to make that mistake…)
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