My fourth day in Iceland started off great. I got up early and drove over the high mountain pass to the small coastal town of Seyðisfjörður. This would be the easternmost – and northernmost – point of my trip to Iceland. The early morning drive up and over the ridge was beautiful. The image above is the first view you get of Seyðisfjörður. If you’ve seen the recent remake of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, the road I was traveling here is the one that Ben Stiller skateboards on.
As you drop into the fjord valley, the road parallels a river that drops over a series of waterfalls. Perhaps the largest — that you can see from the road, anyway — is Gufufoss. There’s a small turnout near the falls so I parked the Tiguan and walked to the falls, through a small group of sheep that were far to focussed on grazing to worry about me. The sun had not yet topped the ridge so I began shooting the falls while they were in full shade:
As I repositioned my tripod, the sunlight began to creep down the cliff face and just began to touch the foreground rocks:
I’m still not sure which of those two versions I prefer. I could have happily stayed and shot longer, but I had a full day ahead and pressed on, down into the valley.
The town was still fully in the shade when I arrived so I drove on through and made a few pictures along the fjord as the sun rose.
Working my way back into town, I went through a bit of an industrial area and loved this old, weathered boat. The sun was just now reaching down into the town, so I made my way to the small inlet so that I could get some shots of the buildings reflected in the water.
I finished up in town and began driving back west — I was officially on my way back to Reykjavik, but had plenty of stops in mind for along the way. First, I decided to stop and shoot the lake that I’d found at the top of the pass earlier in the morning. In the distance you can see what I’m assuming is more smoke from the volcano erupting not far away:
Instead of taking Highway 1 back the way I’d come, I took the smaller highways — 92 and 96 — that stayed closer to the coast. Crossing into the next fjord, however, the clouds began to lower and the weather changed abruptly.
I find Iceland to be particularly beautiful in these dark, moody conditions and was not disappointed at all about losing the sun. I was beginning to realize that I had not seen many people over the last few days. I doubt I’d spoken more than a sentence or two for at least 48 hours. I don’t mind the solitude, but one of the categories of the photo shootout I was participating in was “people” and I began to wonder if I would ever get a chance to make a portrait.
Stopping along the road to get this photo, my luck changed:
I’ll admit it: I was shooting this one out of the car window when I noticed another car pulling off and parking on the other side of the road. When I saw a man with a snow white beard get out of the car, I realized my portrait subjects had just found me. I trotted across the street and spoke with the bearded man’s friend (who seemed to have better English), telling him about my photo project. They agreed to pose for a photo before setting off on their hike, but the English-speaker’s phone rang and he stepped aside to take the call. While he was occupied, I made a few photos of his bearded friend:
The phone call over, I photographed the pair of friends with their hiking gear. This shot was the sole “people” shot I entered, and I was happy to take the gold for it:
Thanks to my patient subjects for postponing their hike long enough to humor me for these images. Back on the road, the clouds continued to descend and sheep were my only companions once again. They tended to linger along the roadsides, but seemed to have enough sense not to dart out into traffic, thankfully.
I finally arrived back to intersect with Highway 1 and soon found myself near the falls I’d shot the afternoon before — Foldafoss. Since I had actually been thinking that those falls would have looked nice in gloomier weather, I thought it was worth a shot to go back up my gravel road a bit to see how they looked in the low clouds. I was so glad that I did as the conditions were perfect and I got several shots of the falls that rank among some of my all-time favorites. It began to rain while I was finishing up and the clouds sank ever lower as I drove back west. The conditions worsened to the point that I could only see a few yards and the mountains and ocean views were lost to me for the rest of the day. I rolled into Vik for the night and scrubbed all my photography plans due to the rain and fog. Skaftafell and the other shots I’d saved for the ride back had to be scrubbed as well. The shootout period continued until 5:00 the following afternoon, but I didn’t get another single frame that I felt was worth entering. Hard to feel too bad about it, though, when I finished up day 4 with these shots of Foldafoss before the sky fell:
