It was a cloudy day but every now and then the wind would push them about just right, and the sun would play on the upper reaches of the glacier in a refulgent display.

Once again, you can see how the nature of the ice changes the further down the glacier you go. The foreground is still ice, despite the dark colour. It is a mixture of ice, ash and morraine (rock debris from when the glacier eroded the sides of the mountain). In sharp contrast, the ice and snow visible through the clouds is an unblemished white.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II with Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS

View this photo large

Tags:   

Glaciers aren't all blue and white! During the course of their long journey from mountaintop to the ocean, they pick up a lot of detritus.

In the case of the Svínafellsjökull tongue of the Vatnajökull glacier, you can see that part of the material digested on the way down the mountainside was volcanic ash (the dark veins in the ice).

This photo was taken at its very end and you can see the glacier itself in the background rising up to the sky. The scale in this image is very deceptive. This photo was taken about 20m above the surface of the water at moderate zoom -- the gash in the middle is about 60m high!

This photo is a blend of 3 exposures in a quasi-HDR way.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II with Canon EF 24-105 f/4L IS

View this photo large

Tags:   

It was a photo of this glacial lagoon that made me want to visit Iceland in the first place. Despite all the beautiful sights we saw in the vicinity of Reykjavik, I was secretly longing for the day when we would make the trip East to to the Vatnajökull glacier. After a day long drive I remember spotting the floating icebergs off in the distance. We found a place to park and started snapping away.

The icebergs too have a story. They began their life as snowfall on the Vatnajökull glacier millennia ago. With thousands upon thousands of years of such snowfall piled on top, our iceberg-to-be was slowly compressed by the massive weight of snow. This compression pushed out the air from the snow resulting in a hard, compact ice. As the snow continued and the weight increased, the ice began to spread outwards as a glacier. Eventually this flow pushed our now ancient ice towards the Atlantic. On meeting the warm oceanic water the ice gradually melted and broke off to form icebergs (this is called calving).

Canon EOS 5D Mark II with Canon EF 24-105 f/4L IS

View this photo large

Tags:   

Another photo of Strokkur in Iceland, this time taken later in the day as the column of boiling water rises towards the dimming sky only to fail, in a hiss of steam and crash of falling water.

For a sense of scale, there is a person walking on the right side of the frame. This photo was taken when the geyser was at around two-thirds of its height so that it fit neatly into a square composition, and before the structure of the shaft of water disintegrates into a cloudy mess.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II with Canon EF 24-105 f/4L IS

View this photo large

Tags:   

Strokkur is a geyser in southwest Iceland a short trip from Reykjavik. Every 5 minutes or so it erupts into a 20 - 30m high column of boiling water which is rather spectacular.

Strokkur is the only consistently erupting geyser in the Geysir area. Great Geysir was dormant when we were visiting, but it used to erupt to many times this height in it's prime. Geysers are alive, going through periods of dormancy only to begin erupting again, usually following an earthquake or other geological event.

This photo was taken a few hundreths of a second after an eruption began when the column was only around 2m high. You can see the mass of bubbles just beneath the surface which would soon continue the rise of the column to around 25m (80ft).

Taking this photo involved keeping the camera focused and steady on the opening for several minutes and then clicking away as the explosion began. Since I was quite close to the eruption, I had to scamper away before the column collapsed, and be aware of which way the wind would blow the boiling water as it landed. Thankfully the water cooled considerably during it's ascent and descent through the chill Icelandic air.

Unhappy with the light at this time, we visited the area again on the way back at twilight.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II with Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L IS

View this photo large

Tags: