"Hang on a minute. Those clouds are going to streak on a long exposure. I'll be back in five!"
Lee and I were ambling slowly back towards the hire car from the rocks that overlook the black sands of the beach at Eystrahorn. It was our second visit here over the last couple of days, the first of which had been particularly provident from a photography perspective, but now it was time for lunch before we would spend the last of our four evenings in the south eastern corner of Iceland at the neighbouring Vestrahorn, to see if we could improve on the previous day's results. This morning's images had been a lazy sort of affair. We'd stopped at an already packed layby and taken handheld shots across the lagoon towards Batman Mountain at the western edge of this giant half circle of land surrounded by mountain and glacier. We'd idly pointed our cameras at the squat orange form of Hvalnes Lighthouse, that sits overlooking the sea at the end of this small promontory. I'd already tried this composition once, but there had been no definition in the sky. We hovered on a grassy knoll, waiting for a group of youngsters to stop taking selfies, so that we could train our viewfinders over a scene that had looked far more atmospheric and interesting thirty-six hours beforehand. Finally I'd trained my camera along the black sands that stretch for miles towards Batman Mountain in the distance. Really, we were just going through the motions, trying to keep our distance from the dozen or so other parties that had stopped here to admire the views. In these moments, we too were just sightseers taking holiday snaps, enjoying the stillness of the unseasonably warm Icelandic autumn day. We'd come away with some very promising results on the previous visit and perhaps there was no harm in this brief interlude from two weeks of non-stop landscape photography in the country where every single landscape competes for your attention as you drive by with your jaw hovering two inches above the steering wheel in wide-eyed wonder.
Lee took the car key and headed back to where we'd parked Kadjargoogoo (see what I did there?), our trusty four by four, while I scampered across the wet boggy ground as fast as my little legs would carry me to the lake we'd found a couple of hours earlier, where I set up the tripod. I already knew exactly where I wanted to stand, and also that in the bright light, only the rarely used 16 stop filter would drag those thin white streaks of cloud across the sky in the way I hoped they would. Ok, so five minutes turned into something more like twenty, but when am I ever likely to be here again? And no matter what the conditions, you need to take the same shot four or five times to make sure that at least one version will be sharp, especially when you're perched at the edge of a quagmire. Satisfied that I had what I wanted, I packed my camera bag and scampered back across the marsh, taking care not to follow any course that might find me spending the remaining moments of my existence struggling in a swamp. Soon I found my way back to the car, where Lee expressed no small degree of disappointment in himself that he hadn't come with me. Happy to enjoy the space around us, I offered to wait, but he was keen to get back to our hut and refuel before the evening ahead at the sister range of Vestrahorn, forty minutes along the road from here.
Later in the day I'd pull another long exposure reflection from the sky at Vestrahorn, which I think I will eventually present here in colour. But in this one with its splashes of bright light, I struggled with over the palette until I decided to finish the process in black and white to simplify the confusion. Cop out? Possibly, but I quite like how this looks when reduced to two simple shades. It's got an easy Sunday morning feel to it, so now seems a good time to post it. Amazing how benign the place can look when you consider the storms and blizzards that routinely batter this coast throughout the year. And I love the way those peaks rise from the ridge here, so grand yet so ogre-like at the same time. It's a place where you can feel just how raw and overwhelming the natural world can be in these remote corners. One of my favourite places in Iceland, no doubt at least in part because it's just that little bit further away from the south coast jewels that the tourist buses flock to in such great numbers. I wonder how long that will last?
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