Basalt
In the morning before we drove to Dyrholaey, where we photographed some puffins like the one in my last upload, we wanted to visit the famous black sand beach Reynisfjara with its famous sea stacks and basalt columns. Originally, we thought about getting there to sunrise, but being a bit worn out from our rush through all the sights in the south the previous days, we woke up a little late and decided to have some breakfast since we already missed the sunrise. However, we didn’t want to leave too late as we knew that busses full of people would probably arrive there soon. So we drove to the black sand beach our navigation system suggested, but this was the beach in Vík from which one can also see the famous sea stacks, but not the basalt columns we wanted to photograph, which were a 15-minute drive away around the corner of the huge cliff.
Fortunately, when we arrived at the Reynisfjara parking lot, we were early enough to find a parking spot right away, but there were already quite a few people there (and the buses arrived half an hour later). We first took some images of the famous basalt columns, including some pictures with ourselves in the frame to show the scale, and then walked along the beach towards the famous sea stacks. I really wanted to take some of the classic pictures, but the weather was once again - untypical for Iceland - beautiful with blue skies and harsh sunlight. So we continued our walk and noticed a large basalt column rock formation in front of the cliff. Most of the people were taking pictures of the beach or the cave, but we were both so fascinated by these basalt columns that we spent most of our time trying to find appealing compositions of these rock formations. This image turned out to be one of my favorites because it is very simple, has some nice textures that go pretty well with the dark editing I applied. Funnily enough, not too long ago we watched a video of Micheal Shainblum, who was also recently in Iceland, and it turns out that he shot quite a few images of exactly the same rock formation we also photographed. Even though I’m no Michael Shainblum, I really hope that you like my attempt at capturing this amazing rock formations! :)
Basalt
In the morning before we drove to Dyrholaey, where we photographed some puffins like the one in my last upload, we wanted to visit the famous black sand beach Reynisfjara with its famous sea stacks and basalt columns. Originally, we thought about getting there to sunrise, but being a bit worn out from our rush through all the sights in the south the previous days, we woke up a little late and decided to have some breakfast since we already missed the sunrise. However, we didn’t want to leave too late as we knew that busses full of people would probably arrive there soon. So we drove to the black sand beach our navigation system suggested, but this was the beach in Vík from which one can also see the famous sea stacks, but not the basalt columns we wanted to photograph, which were a 15-minute drive away around the corner of the huge cliff.
Fortunately, when we arrived at the Reynisfjara parking lot, we were early enough to find a parking spot right away, but there were already quite a few people there (and the buses arrived half an hour later). We first took some images of the famous basalt columns, including some pictures with ourselves in the frame to show the scale, and then walked along the beach towards the famous sea stacks. I really wanted to take some of the classic pictures, but the weather was once again - untypical for Iceland - beautiful with blue skies and harsh sunlight. So we continued our walk and noticed a large basalt column rock formation in front of the cliff. Most of the people were taking pictures of the beach or the cave, but we were both so fascinated by these basalt columns that we spent most of our time trying to find appealing compositions of these rock formations. This image turned out to be one of my favorites because it is very simple, has some nice textures that go pretty well with the dark editing I applied. Funnily enough, not too long ago we watched a video of Micheal Shainblum, who was also recently in Iceland, and it turns out that he shot quite a few images of exactly the same rock formation we also photographed. Even though I’m no Michael Shainblum, I really hope that you like my attempt at capturing this amazing rock formations! :)