Travelling with a film camera: Iceland, Part 2
Golden Circle and western regions
So, me and couple of my friends decided to visit Iceland for photographic reasons and of course when going to the heaven of landscape photography, where highest resolution camera and sharpest lenses are recommended… I took only a 35mm film camera with me. Why on earth? Cause I could!
In previous chapter, I wrote how we planned for the trip, how we visited Reykjavik, Geysir and how we set up camp for the night. So it is about time I continue where we left off.
We woke up quite early, somewhat jetlagged from the flight over. I was feeling great, but Olger the guy I was sharing tent with complained it was slightly cold. Turns out he had brought a sleeping bag that was not exactly rated for Iceland climate. Although the weather was quite warm on days — over 15°C, it did get considerably colder during night. His sleeping bag was rated for comfort at 9°C, so apparently the temperatures were getting lower than that.
We packed our tents and headed off to visit our second Golden Circle site. The Gullfoss. One epic waterfall, that is one of the biggest tourist attractions in iceland.
I have to admit: When I was young I was totally obsessed with waterfalls. I originate from lands of very flat persuasion, there was not a single waterfall for hundreds of kilometers. So obviously I wanted to see them.
Recently, for some reason, my interest with the rapid altitude changes of water has faded. I can look ocean waves for hours, but this thing, meh… So I guess my lukewarm feelings towards waterfalls influenced my ability to take pictures: no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t find a good angle to take picture of this damn thing, so I didn’t waste too much film on it and was left with just a few bad pictures.
While just few kilometers away from the waterfall there was another stream going under a bridge with typically blue water rushing through. I snapped couple of pictures which I personally find much more pleasing to the eye.
So we headed towards the legendary Þingvellir national park. Place where two of the tectonic plates, Eurasian and North American, meet. They are slowly moving away from each other one inch a year stretching the whole iceland slightly bigger leaving a big fault in it’s wake.
Now the thing is: I wasn’t really focusing much on what others were saying, I was too busy looking outside and dreaming, so I thought we were just going to see one other waterfalls. As I don’t have warmest feelings towards waterfalls and it was also slightly raining I was thinking: “I won’t take the camera with me to take another hazy picture of a waterfall, I’ll save more film for better sights.” And I just left the camera in the car.
That was big mistake! Although we did go see another waterfall, we carried on from there to see rest of the site and ended up on a several hours of hiking through most amazing landscapes. I saw so many great compositions I would have loved to shoot, but I had left my camera in the car. I cursed myself, but then I realized: Hey, I detect much more great compositions in the wild when I don’t have my camera! Having camera at hand almost forces me to take pictures while I see something OK and doesn’t leave me enough time to look for something that is great.
I tried to keep that in mind while we continued on our journey and tried to focus better. Look for better compositions and not just snap anything, but first try to find best way to get it on a picture.
We were quite eager to get out of the Reykjavik region and hit the famous ring road that circles the entire Iceland. We were just looking for some food and then headed off towards the west.
Most people seem to go on Iceland tour on the so-called “southbound” route, which means they take the circle road counterclockwise. Main reason being the fact that most of the interesting sights are on the southern coast, so you can enjoy them while fairly fresh.
We obviously disregarded the entire advice and went on the northbound route. Maybe because there was a big bridge that Olger wanted to see. Maybe because I was screaming from back seat: NORDURLAND!!!
Either way, when we reached the bridge, it turned out it was something quite the opposite: a tunnel. A very long tunnel of almost 6 km length, going 165 meters under the sea.
As our home country, Estonia only has a single tunnel that is few hundred meters long, it was definitely more exciting than expected bridge. Right after exiting the tunnel, we were less excited to find out about the toll on the tunnel. Turns out this is the only place in Iceland where you have to pay a toll on the road, but fortunately the cost was not too much and we concluded it was worth the experience.
The views were just stunning, there was just enough clouds and just enough of sunlight to create interesting images. Most amazing was the fact that whenever I looked in different direction something totally different yet equally stunning was there.
We continued down the road, stopping every now and then and taking pictures. But then something totally unexpected happened. Remember the time when I said I have rather lukewarm feelings about waterfalls? Well scratch that. Because we saw the most picturesque waterfall by the road that just screamed: “Take my pictures!”
The light was right, just close to the golden hour. Waterfall was angled well enough for the sun to cast light on it. Everything looked absolutely fantastic. I snapped many pictures. Yet I still don’t remember what this waterfall is called.
After having taken last bit out of the waterfall and surroundings we headed towards Ólafsvik camp where we spent the night. The place was also quite beautiful, surrounded by hills, but I didn’t take any pictures because it was getting rather cold. The temperature was barely 10 degrees when we reached the camp and it got even colder during the night.
You can read all about this in the next part of the series.
