Highlands

Iceland is one of those places, you really just have to go see the place to believe it. The light is unlike anywhere I've been on the planet. I found long drawn out golden hours that seem to persist for many hours, eventually transcending into something more odd. And then when darkness finally comes, the sky lights up like a green flowing river with purple accents, as if the stars weren't amazing enough.

 

 

It's a rough life for a photographer; I was constantly awake as the photographing rarely gets bad, and I always felt the compulsive need to point my camera at something, everything, everywhere, and maximize my stay. Eventually I'd have to go home.

 

 

The fact is I could spend nearly a lifetime processing a one month trip to this place, but then there's always the fact that I could have gotten better light. But I'm splitting hairs on the difference between epic once in a lifetime shots, and amazing, spectacular shots that most amateurs would happily tout as one of the pinnacles of their photographic achievements.

 

 

Let's be real though, this is a picture of a green hill with black lava/sand as the foreground. And somehow it's beautiful, spectacular and majestic all at the same time. Why? Mostly because this place is unique, and it conjures ideas. Thoughts about how the lighting hit this area while being nearly completely overcast, and how the black came to be, and why the mountain is so green... Questions I cannot begin to answer. Science tries to explain such things, but the reality is, no one can explain creation to us as fact. No one knows how these things came to be, they just are. Nature is beautiful, the world is amazing, and it's important to take a moment in the day to appreciate these facts.

 

Done