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By L

Iceland
IT MAY HAVE GROUNDED AIRCRAFT AND WASHED AWAY ROADS,
BUT THE RECENT VOLCANIC ERUPTIONs WASN’T GOING TO
STOP LEE FROST from VISITING tHE LAND OF FIRE AND ICE
words & pictures: lee frost
 to es
phoventur
ad Iceland
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By Lee Fr

Iceland

Above & Left:

My EOS-1Ds MkIII
was feeling pretty
sorry for itself
after getting up
close and personal
with an erupting
volcano. This is me
behind the surgical

I
mask, pretending
’m lounging on the landing of a cosy hotel in the rendition of Jesus on the cross, complete with wake-the- to be on
assignment for
small Icelandic town of Vik í Mýrdal, downloading dead wailing and disturbing dribbling, then pops outside National
the day’s images and downing Scotch with a couple for a smoke. That’s our cue. Gathering laptops and card Geographic.
of photographer mates who have joined me on the readers like a volcano’s about to erupt, we scarper to our
TOP: Reykjavik
trip. It’s been a long day – they always are in Iceland rooms, bolt the doors and hope he doesn’t have an axe. has to enjoy one of
outside the never-ending night of winter – and ‘just Next morning, relieved to have survived, we head the most stunning
another one for the road’ has become a fourth, or downstairs for breakfast and are informed by the jovial locations of any
maybe a fifth. hotelier that our strange friend disappeared in the early capital city in the
We’re just about to call it a night when a man so big he hours. “Got in his car, drove away and left all his world. No smog or
pollution here.
could play the giant in Jack & The Beanstalk without the belongings in his room”. I look outside. A volcano is
fancy dress decides to join us. He’s very sweaty; we’re erupting. Man, this place is weird. RIGHT:
slightly squiffy. It would have been nice of him to ask, but Actually, it’s not just weird. It’s also amazing, stunning, Eyafjallajökull in
full force. The
who’s going to argue with Conan the Barbarian? awe-inspiring, mind-blowing. Iceland is everything you houses in the
“Hey guys, you know Sarah Brightman?” His voice is ever imagine it to be – multiplied by 100. And we’ve only bottom of the
deep and gravelly, like he eats volcanic rock for fun. been here for three days. frame give you an
“Erm, you mean the singer who used to dance in The trip had been planned months earlier, long before idea of just how
big the ash plume
her underwear on Top of the Pops?” My voice is Eyafjallajökull decided to blow a gasket, but what the was. Bet their
squeaky and pathetic, like I’m auditioning for Alvin heck, we thought. If nothing else it’ll add a bit of insurance goes up
and the Chipmunks. excitement. It certainly did. next year!
“Yes. That one,” replies the Gruffalo. “She’s the most The previous day, hours before meeting Sarah opening
beautiful woman in the world. I love her. She saved me.” Brightman’s stalker, my mates and I found ourselves spread: Talk
As introductions go, that’s about as surreal as it gets driving through a dust storm of biblical proportions. about being in the
in my book, despite the duty-free. And he’s not done yet. One minute bright sunshine and blue sky, the next, War eye of the storm.
“Guys, I think we
Having casually informed us that he’s a nutcase and an of the Worlds. As far as the eye could see the landscape just took a wrong
alcoholic (quick, hide the booze lads) he looks deep into was covered in black powdery ash. It was how I imagine turn and ended up
my eyes, tells me I could be his brother, does a scary the surface of the moon to be – dead, desolate and on the moon”.

116 DIGITAL SLR PHOTOGRAPHY october 2010

 adv pho
ent
ureto
I spotted this lonely church
from several miles away
and knew immediately it
would make a great subject. Iceland s
By Lee
The style of architecture on
Iceland is quite unusual. Frost

Lee’s kit
A Canon EOS 1Ds
MkIII with a Zeiss
21mm f/2.8 lens;
Canon 17-40mm;
24-70mm and
70-200mm
zooms, Lee ND
hard grads,
Heliopan
polariser, Gitzo
tripod with
Manfrotto 410
geared head,
Lowepro Vertex
200 backpack,
60GB of CF
cards, MacBook
“My hair was matted, my ears and nose clogged. I dreaded to think what laptop and
Lacie back-up
state my camera’s sensor would be in after such a severe sandblasting” hard drive.

deserted. Savage gusts of wind whipped up dust that it to be. The easy option is to follow Highway 1, which TOP: There are
probably more
stole breath and stung eyes, while in the distance, circumnavigates the island in an 800-odd mile loop. horses on Iceland
behind the mountains, the menacing volcanic plume We met one English guy who’d done it on a bicycle in than people. This
belched away unabated. 12 days, and passed a mad Japanese unicyclist who’d group were taking
I’d never taken photographs in such extreme given himself three months. Call me old-fashioned, but shelter behind a
rock outcrop by
conditions. My hair was matted, my ears and nose I’ll take the 4x4 if it’s okay with you. the side of
clogged. I dreaded to think what state my camera’s While it’s tempting to do the full circuit and sample the Highway 1.
sensor would be in after such a severe sandblasting – or highlights on a whistle-stop tour, we decided on a shorter
ABOVE LEFT:
the unfiltered lens for that matter. I found out later, and route so we could spend quality time at chosen locations Dramatic cliffs of
it wasn’t pleasant! “Pass me the Arctic Butterfly boys, and return to them if necessary when the light was better. Dyrhólaey near
I’m going in”. Travelling in May means generally good weather, long Vik í Mýrdal. The
Out of nowhere a police Jeep pulled up. But instead of days – but not the 22-hour days of summer – far fewer big cloud is the
ash plume of
telling us to ‘hit the road, Jack’, as I expected, the kind tourists, no need to book hotels in advance and lower Eyafjallajökull.
officer handed us each a face mask and wished us a prices. Despite financial collapse, Iceland is still an Vik got it bad while
good day. So it was back into the action, padding around expensive country. In July and August a modest 4x4 will we were there, ash
the ash-covered earth in search of alternative angles and set you back around £175 per day to hire and beer’s a falling like snow.
volcano views, shooting handheld – too spongy for fiver a pint. In May, vehicle hire costs almost halve. ABOVE RIGHT:
tripods – and laughing quietly inside our masks at the Beer’s still a fiver a pint, but you can’t win ’em all. The Reykjanes
wonder of it all. Changing lenses would have been The main downside to travelling outside the summer Peninsula mud
pools. Reminders
sensor suicide so I made do with the 17-40mm locked months is that the roads through the interior are closed. that Iceland is a
on the camera body. It proved to be the perfect choice. That’s the difficult option compared to Highway 1 – head giant ticking
Exploring Iceland is as easy or as difficult as you want into the highlands and you really are in the back of timebomb.

october 2010 DIGITAL SLR PHOTOGRAPHY 119

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By Lee Fr

ABOVE: On the
evening this image “It rumbled like thunder before hurling rocks the size of cars into the sky – Seljalandsfoss and Skógafoss. The weather at the start
of the trip was cloudy and the light flat, but this gave me
was taken, you
could hear rocks so big you could see them with the naked eye from several miles away” the perfect excuse to put a ten-stop ND filter on my lens
Eyafjallajökull and experiment with long exposures before converting then Svinafellsjökull and the beautiful Fjallsarlön. ABOVE MIDDLE:
rumbling like beyond, among vivid mountains, icy lakes and the heading north to Gullfoss, Iceland’s most famous the images to black & white. At the coastal town of Vik But nothing compares to Jökulsarlón, where the When the icebergs
thunder. It was a at Jökulsarlón do
perfect craters of extinct volcanoes. But having waterfall, Geysir, Þinvellir National Park and Reykjavík. my ten-stop ND saw further action down on the black Brieðamerkurjökull glacier crumbles into a deep lagoon get to the sea,
truly amazing,
once-in-a-lifetime researched the trip and spoken to other photographers, The billowing ash plume from Eyjafjallajökull was a volcanic beach, creating fine-art images full of motion and icebergs bob luminous-blue before floating out to they’re tossed and
experience. I decided that there’s more than enough to see and constant presence for the first few days. When weather and mood, while the nearby rock stacks of sea, where the crashing emerald green waves of the turned by the
Hopefully! shoot in Iceland without straying too far off the beaten conditions were clear it made an amazing sight – and Reynisdrangar provided further inspiration. North Atlantic melt and shape them into delicate glassy waves then
unceremoniously
TOP RIGHT: track, so the highlands could wait for the next trip. sound – as it rumbled like thunder before hurling rocks East of Vik, Iceland proper appeared on the horizon. ice sculptures before throwing them back up onto the dumped back on
Icebergs heading Our plan was to pick up Highway 1 at Keflavìk, home to the size of cars into the sky – rocks so big you could see The Vatnajökull Glacier is the world’s biggest icecap beach – a perfect black backdrop of volcanic sand. It the beach. I was
for the sea at Iceland’s main airport, then head down to the south coast them with the naked eye from several miles away. We outside the Poles and suddenly you’re driving past it. really is like being in another world and we spent hours lucky this one
Jökulsarlón glacial via Reykjavìk, travelling east as far as Höfn (pronounced made many unplanned stops to capture this spectacle, Covering 8,300km – three times bigger than alternating between lagoon and beach, filling memory stayed still.
lagoon, one of Hup) via waterfalls at Seljalandsfoss and Skógafoss, on to just pulling up by the roadside and pulling out our Luxembourg – the scale is impossible to grasp. cards at an alarming rate. ABOVE bottom:
Iceland’s most The impressive
amazing sights, the charming town of Vik ĺ Mýrdal, the coastal cliffs at telezooms, but really it was just an amazing aside and At its fringes, glaciers pleated with deep crevasses Heading back west from Höfn, we were prevented
Dyrhólaey, Skaftafell National Park and the Vatnajökull there were many more stunning views to experience and creep between mountains like giant icy tongues. We from visiting a few of our planned locations due to mountains near
though not the Höfn. Amazing
easiest to capture. Glacier, Jökulsarlón glacial lagoon – with detours into the capture, far more than we would have time for. visited Skaftafellsjökull in the Skaftafell National Park floods caused by the eruption taking out roads. We saw views are never far
hills where possible – then retrace our route before I had great fun shooting the towering waterfalls of and were awestruck by a sea of shifting, creaking ice, clear evidence of this close to Highway 1, but up in the away in Iceland.

120 DIGITAL SLR PHOTOGRAPHY october 2010 october 2010 DIGITAL SLR PHOTOGRAPHY 121
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By Lee Fr

“þingvellir was due to be our last location before heading back to the UK, but
Eyjafjalljökull had other ideas and started kicking off again, closing the airport”
hills the thundering meltwater caused devastation. CLOCKWISE heading back to the UK, but Eyjafjallajökull had other
Heading back through the fallout zone of the ash FROM TOP LEFT: ideas and started to kick off again, closing Keflavík
plume brought more action and excitement. Then a few The magic of Airport and stopping all flights out. Normally such a
mono: Vik church
miles beyond the farming town of Hella (pronounced at dawn; an delay would have been greeted with dismay, but having
Hetla), we left it behind for the final time – or so we example of only scratched the surface we were happy to spend
thought – and headed north, to magnificent Gullfoss abstract simplicity another couple of days exploring the amazing Icelandic
where spray from the thundering falls creates a beautiful on Vik beach; a landscape. So with the 4x4 hire duly extended we
rainbow every time the sun shines, then Geysir, where dark, brooding headed to Reykjanes Peninsula where we were
Skogafoss
every few minutes the Strokkur geyser explodes, waterfall and the greeted by bubbling mud pools and smoking earth in
sending water and steam 30 metres into the sky. ash plume of the colourful geothermal landscape.
Nearby, Þingvellir National Park is a haunting, lonely Eyafjallajökull Iceland is big, bold and beautiful. It’s a land of
landscape of stunted trees and deep mossy fissures. To rises over Skogar. contrasts and if you enjoy shooting magnificent wild
Icelanders it’s sacred ground – the Vikings established RIGHT: Waterfall landscapes, there’s nowhere quite like it. It’s also a
the world’s first democratic parliament, the AlÞing, there at þingvellir place you’ll want to return to again and again, because
in AD 930 – but it’s also where the North American and National Park – one trip simply isn’t enough.
a surreal and
Eurasian tectonic plates play tug-of-war and are slowly lonely place Lee will be leading a photo tour of Iceland in May 2011.
pulling the earth apart at a rate of 2mm per year. well-suited to Dates and prices are to be confirmed, but you can
Þingvellir was due to be our last location before black & white. register your interest at info@photoadventures.co.uk

122 DIGITAL SLR PHOTOGRAPHY october 2010