Being general optimists, my wife and I made reservations to go on a cruise with her sisters in October 2021. Since that is a time that I like for us to do a dedicated photography trip, I checked around for an alternative destination. I found a nice-looking photo workshop in Iceland after the cruise and made additional bookings for that. This turned out to be a doubly good plan, as the cruise ended up getting canceled anyway.

Landing in Iceland (my wife decided to stay home), I was met by the workshop leader and a snowstorm. We spent the rest of the day mostly driving through the gloomy weather. The snow did stop later that day, but conditions remained pretty overcast. We stayed the next two nights in Grundarfjordur.

This lodging was conveniently close to the Kirkjufell mountain and waterfall, which are very iconic subjects for photography in Iceland. We went out before sunrise to scout specific compositions and start shooting in the blue hour. After some initial shots, I wandered around the area along the edge of the lagoon below the falls. It had been fairly overcast early on, but the clouds were beginning to break up. As sunrise approached, I noticed that the mountain was starting to catch the light. I made my way back to the waterfall in time to shoot the scene you see here.