Picture Story

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 to Iceland for November, and made additional bookings for that. This turned out to be a doubly good plan, as the cruise ended up getting cancelled 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 started to wander 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 I walked along I saw that we were starting to get some color from the sunrise. A little further on I saw that the sky was continuing to improve, and that I also had a reflection on the lagoon ice, plus some grass in the foreground. The wind was moving the grass around, so I shortened the exposure to keep it still. This was my favorite shot in that situation.