Landscape Photography On Location: Iceland. Snaefellsnes, Mývatn, Jökulsárlón. Midnight Sun.

So I'm in Iceland. I'm going to do some landscape photography. I'm driving on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula in Iceland today. It's the middle of June and the sun only sets for about 2 hours but just skims under the horizon. So effectively we get 24 hour daylight which makes sleeping a nightmare. But it's great for photography because we can go out at 9 o'clock at night and have amazing light all the way until 4 or 5 in the morning. Unfortunately the weather's turned and it's looking very stormy and quite ominous. But I'm actually really happy because it's going to make for some really interesting moody pictures. Well, I've been driving for a while now and it's been pretty flat and uninspiring. Very grey which is a shame because when it started out it looked quite promising. But after a few miles of nothing the clouds have started to break up and it looks interesting again. I've got quite a simple composition here. With my photography I'm trying to look a bit closer rather than getting the obvious picture. I'm trying to find details. So I've got these amazing patterns in the sand which create this leading line out to the sea. And it looks quite nice. I'm just using a polariser to get rid of the glare on the sand. I'll show you very quickly the effect that the polariser has. So here's the image and if I just turn the polariser you can see the difference that that makes. And all it does is it takes the glare off of the sand so we can see a lot more detail. Because if we have it like this for example the reflection from the sky is quite strong and you'll lose a lot of the detail in the sand. Whereas if we spin the polariser we can just get rid of that glare. Well it's a bit windy but we're driving past this crater. It's Sacks Hole crater and it just looks amazing right now. You can see storm clouds behind it. Yet we're still getting a nice bit of ambient light from the glow from the sky behind us so the whole thing feels quite balanced. I'm going to try and take a photograph in this wind. It should be interesting. It wasn't this windy ten minutes ago. That is impressive. It looks really nice. The colours on that crater are fantastic. The contrast with the really dark sky behind it. I don't know if you can see that but it looks pretty cool. Right, let's get a photograph. So we're now on the path and I've got a wider lens on. Using the gravel track as a leading line up to the subject. Can you see the clouds behind me? That's fantastic. I'm a little bit concerned that it's going to be blurry because of all the wind shake. So I'm going to put the ISO up to 400 which will reduce the shutter speed to a tenth of a second. If I let go of this tripod, it's a goner. That was a touch underexposed. I'm going to go for a sixth of a second. The wind's dropped a bit now. There we go. I don't know what it is but I always seem to get to these amazing locations when there's nobody else about. It's so peaceful. Just like being on Mars. I haven't found the shot yet. I'm too busy looking around in absolute awe. It is amazing. When I come to these places, I always just try and aim for one photograph that I'm really happy with. Because if you go in there with the attitude of trying to photograph absolutely everything you see, then you end up rushing from one shot to the next shot to the next shot. You can end up with just a lot of mediocre images. Not necessarily all the time, but that can happen. What I've got here, what I've just walked upon, is this pattern in the mud. This white, reddy, green, round pattern. What I'm thinking is if I use a wide lens and we've got all the steam vents in the background, then we should get a colourful sky. Let's have a look. I just think I need to give it another half an hour or so and get a bit more colour in the sky. But I think this is the shot I'm going to go for. The thing is, I'm in no rush. I'm in no hurry at all. The good thing about being in Iceland at this time of year is that the sun doesn't set. At home in England, when it's like this, you think, oh God, I've got 10 minutes, go, go, go. But here, I've got three hours. I really can take my time. I'm still amazed that there's no one else around. I really am. Right, I'm going to frame up and try and get an image. So, after quite a long gravel road, we're going to come to a waterfall that I've really wanted to photograph for quite a while now. I can't pronounce it, so you can see the name on the bottom of the screen. In my opinion, this is one of the most picturesque waterfalls I've ever been to. What makes it even better is that it's such a pain to get to. So, there's no one here. I've got the whole place to myself. So, we're going to go down, have a look, find a composition and take a photograph. Right, so, basically, my setup is really simple. I've got an ND filter, the little stopper to slow down the exposure. I'm going to take a four-second exposure and see how it looks. So, it's just after midnight and I'm at the famous Glacial Lagoon, Jökulsárlón Glacial Lagoon. And if you think it's easy to get a photograph here, you're very much mistaken. It's not easy. But we're going to try and find a couple of compositions and see what we get. So, I think I've found a composition here. But what I'm going to do is I'm just going to get the camera off the tripod and I'm just going to walk around and just look at it from different angles. It would be a nightmare to do this if it was on the tripod. And what I'm looking for is foreground interest, i.e. an iceberg that's relatively close to the shore. And then I'm also looking for another focal point in the background and we've got this ginormous iceberg just over my shoulder there. That will definitely work for a feature in the background. And it's just trying to line everything up because it's so cluttered. You can quite easily walk away here disappointed if you just get the camera out and start shooting, assuming you're going to get a good shot. It's definitely worth having a very good look around. Deciding to take three steps to your left or right could very well make or break an image. This place is truly amazing. Once you get your eye in and you start picking out shapes and compositions in the clutter, it's absolutely phenomenal. We've got gorgeous light. It's about one in the morning and it's just perfect. I've found this iceberg here just in the foreground of my shot and I'm just going to do a focus stack. I'm going to focus on the background and then I'm going to focus on this foreground object. Stitch them in Photoshop and it should work quite well. I've got a polariser on which really, really helps in conditions like this. It takes all the reflections off the ice and it darkens down the sky and cuts through the haze. Ultimately giving you a better image. All right, so here I am at the beach. Now, there's not as many icebergs here in summer as there are in winter, but I don't think that's a bad thing because in winter it can look very cluttered and very difficult to find a composition. Whereas here in summer there's fewer icebergs and they're more spaced apart which makes isolating them easier, which means finding compositions is easier. The shot I'm working on at the minute is actually using a long lens looking right down the beach and I'm using the breaking waves as a leading line down the shoreline where you see the icebergs and the telegraph poles in the mountains in the background. The only problem with this is I've got very little control. So, I'm basically waiting and hoping that the waves fall in such a way that it creates a lovely leading line. A nice curved S-shape would be ideal. I've got quite a high ISO of 400 because I wanted a shutter speed of less than half a second so you still get a lot of detail in the water. Any longer than that and it just loses a lot of its character. It just becomes quite flat. I really want to capture the energy of the waves. We'll get there eventually, it's just a case of waiting. Yeah, that'll do. I think we've got it there. I'm going to move on and try and find a better composition. This is harder than it looks. I'm after an iceberg that's got a lot of clarity to it because a lot of the frosty, milky looking icebergs at the minute they're really, really clashing with the midnight sky. So, you almost lose the iceberg. I need some contrast. That's what I need. I'm really working hard for my images today. I mean, just because a place is good doesn't mean it's easy. Argh, it's never easy. Right, I think I'm onto something here. I've come down to the other end of the beach and it's a lot calmer. Much, much, much warmer. This iceberg just here seems to be so solitary. It just seems to be on its own. The waves are lapping. Call me crazy, but I've got the tent stop out and I'm going to go for it. I'm just going to do it. I don't even care anymore. I'm just going to do it. I'm going to tent stop this iceberg and see what happens. Moment of truth. Yes, that's quite nice.