Stokksnes
Calm seas send shallow ripples over black sands to create a beautiful mirror reflecting the indigo and purple tones of twilight and the stunning promontory mountains of Vestrahorn, on the Stokksnes Peninsula, near Hofn, Iceland.
Several years ago, my wife and I were in southeast Iceland for a few days on a late winter stopover and the ocean hurled angry and dangerous waves at the shores without pause for whole time we were there. Needless to say, carefree rambling through the shallow surf was not so advisable then. Expecting more of the same on this trip, I was pleasantly surprised to find these beautifully placid conditions allowing us to work these beach reflections well past nightfall (when the aurora later joined the scene) and to experience this cusp of the great frigid expanse of the North Atlantic without concern of being drawn out into the darkening abyss.
I really like the area in the foreground center of this image where, in our familiar experience in photography as with the naked eye, the angle of view leaves the rippled sheen of water transparent rather than reflective as elsewhere in the image. Sometimes I might have changed the camera angle or cropped out that area so as to go with a more pure reflection image, but the inky blackness of the wet sand beach in the rapidly waning light here was a significant part of my visual experience as I walked through the shallow encroaching waves, and I wanted to try to include a bit of that experience in the image.
A slightly closer look also reveals one other person a ways up the beach. I spared the cloning brush and left his or her distant red-jacketed presence in this image because I thought it added to the sense of the remote vastness here in this later hour after other visitors had left with the light of day.
Thanks for viewing.
Stokksnes
Calm seas send shallow ripples over black sands to create a beautiful mirror reflecting the indigo and purple tones of twilight and the stunning promontory mountains of Vestrahorn, on the Stokksnes Peninsula, near Hofn, Iceland.
Several years ago, my wife and I were in southeast Iceland for a few days on a late winter stopover and the ocean hurled angry and dangerous waves at the shores without pause for whole time we were there. Needless to say, carefree rambling through the shallow surf was not so advisable then. Expecting more of the same on this trip, I was pleasantly surprised to find these beautifully placid conditions allowing us to work these beach reflections well past nightfall (when the aurora later joined the scene) and to experience this cusp of the great frigid expanse of the North Atlantic without concern of being drawn out into the darkening abyss.
I really like the area in the foreground center of this image where, in our familiar experience in photography as with the naked eye, the angle of view leaves the rippled sheen of water transparent rather than reflective as elsewhere in the image. Sometimes I might have changed the camera angle or cropped out that area so as to go with a more pure reflection image, but the inky blackness of the wet sand beach in the rapidly waning light here was a significant part of my visual experience as I walked through the shallow encroaching waves, and I wanted to try to include a bit of that experience in the image.
A slightly closer look also reveals one other person a ways up the beach. I spared the cloning brush and left his or her distant red-jacketed presence in this image because I thought it added to the sense of the remote vastness here in this later hour after other visitors had left with the light of day.
Thanks for viewing.