Lately I’ve been processing more shots from my past travels to Japan. This not only includes the beautiful landscapes of North Japan but also includes some modern architecture from Tokyo. I also managed to continue two recent series, the “Observer” and “Zebra” theme got an addition each.
Here are the first 3, enjoy 😉
Now that we arrived in another fresh year it’s the best time to reflect on good and bad memories. Of course here I’d like to focus on good memories in the form of pictures. Last year I focussed more on landscape photography again, architecture photography was only covered by the trip to Frankfurt and Japan. Unfortunately the pictures of the latter trip (also landscapes) are still in the process of getting finished, so I’ll not be able to cover them here, which is quite a shame. In the meantime I’ve been to Tokyo again and came back only last week, so there’s even more to come in the architecture photography department, stay tuned!
Although I have the feeling that I didn’t go out shooting not nearly as often as I wished for I still feel and see an improvement of my skills, I no longer rely and focus on poplar locations a.k.a. “money shot locations”, I completely lost the motivation to shoot something which has been shot exactly the same so many times already. I tremendously improved my skills of discovering interest and beauty in the area which surrounds me. I however still struggle when it comes to details in terms of solid compositions and post-processing decisions. Often I’m also having a hard time with pre-visualization of shots which many artists highly rely on to fulfill their vision they already have in their mind before even picking up the camera. Well, that will leave something for the next years to concentrate one, I guess!
Now I want to present you my top 10 of 2015, without particular order. I hope you also enjoy those pics as I do 😉
A beautiful sunset at the breathtaking Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon, unfortunately photos can’t simply describe how cool this place is.
This beautiful waterfall is called Aldeyjarfoss, it was our first destination on the way down the F26 which lead us through the middle of Iceland, all the way to the south, passing by many beautiful areas in the highlands. When we arrived it was around late noon and the sun was shining. We immediately started to find out whether we can have some of us posing next to the waterfall for a pictures we’d like to take during sunset or dawn. While we came closer to the waterfall I discovered that there was a beautiful lush green grotto on the other side just below the ledge, where most photographers stand on while not noticing the beauty below them. So I already made a mental note to not take that hackneyed composition from the ledge above, instead climb down to the green grotto below and try my luck there, risking to not get that “moneyshot”, which a lot of photographers are really obsessed about, instead my hope was to get away with an original and refreshing capture of this beautiful place.
We almost spend a good half hour at the rocks right next to the waterfall. While sitting there the noise of the rushing water and the bright sunshine was so soothing that I almost felt asleep on the rock. We decided to go back to the car, have late lunch and get some quality sleep before heading back for sunset and a looong night…
This was the only occasion where we set foot into an Icelandic forest.
Because Iceland has undergone extensive deforestation since Vikings settled in the ninth century there are not many forests to discover.
However we were able to discover a very deep and bizarre birch forest on our way down the F26. I really liked the shapes of the trunks and branches, unlike usual birch trees these had this gnarly zig-zag ppearance, which mad them look really bizarre.
This will be the last entry until new years eve, therefore I wish everybody who reads this a peaceful and restful time over Christmas and new years eve. CU next year!
The name of this waterfall (Godafoss in Icelandic) suggests a more epic story then there acutally is. It is said that after Christianity became the official religion of Iceland at around year 1000, lawspeaker Þorgeir Ljósvetningagoði threw all his statues of the Norse gods into the waterfall when he returned from his duties in the national parlament of Iceland. At least I was hoping for a more dramatic story 😉
I think this glacier lagoon called Jökulsárlón was one of the most impressive scenes I’ve witnessed in Iceland. It’s so surreal and it always changes its look, only a few hours are enough and you get a completely different arrangement of icebergs, because there is a small channel which runs into the sea constantly drawing the icebergs into the sea. Especially during the quiet nights this place can be quite mysterious because of the cracking noise when icebergs break apart or when they run ashore.
This was one of these places we visited during the night just to be in time for the sunrise the next norming, little did we know how cool this place looks while arriving at around 11pm.
We were really surprised the next morning how cool these sanddunes and those gigantic mountains in the background looked like.
We were also surprised that this place was the only one we found in Iceland where we were supposed to pay 600kr just to drive on a sand road to get to the beach and the local lighthouse. The reasoning behind this “fee” was nature preservation, which I personally really doubted.
Iceland is full of natural wounds, two of them are waterfalls and canyons, there are just so many.
One of these rather popular canyons has a name which is really hard to pronounce, it’s called Fjaðrárgljúfur, one of my favorites (3rd image).
