Like most landscape photographers, I headed towards the incredible Gullfoss waterfall soon after having arrived in Iceland. We were driving in our own car, following a pre-selected route and monitoring signs along the road. We had an itinerary that roughly followed the famous Golden Circle route that begins in Reykjavik and planned to spend the night near Gullfoss for some morning photography. We were taken by surprise when we encountered a sign directing us to a waterfall called Faxafoss.
We had not heard of it and knew nothing about it. A quick look through the materials we had in the car turned up nothing. But we decided to check it out and took a short detour. The falls proved to be very impressive, more than 250 feet wide and flowing heavily at that time. They are not tall, at only about 25 feet, but the intense flow made up for that. Some websites describe it as serene, but we found it to be anything but.
There are several vantage points for photographs, but I opted to take a short walk from the car park and scramble down the rocks at the river’s edge. This put me just a few feet from the torrent, and I considered options to best capture the scene. It was late morning, and the falls were backlit from my position. Usually, I would opt for a long exposure to smooth the flow, but my position so close to the rapid flow suggested the opposite. I chose a very short exposure and a moderate aperture to maximise focus across the falls.
With the strong backlight, a low ISO choice was still possible. I wanted to freeze the flow across the entire frame and capture the scene as close as possible to the falls to maximise the sense of power and intensity this relatively short waterfall created. The highlights off the water were at risk of being blown out, so I underexposed as needed to retain detail there. This image was my favourite, with background clouds well-lit and the foam and spray of the water captured in detail.
