Day 2 – Iceland Trip 2014 – 19th February 2014

I think Lee Iggulden (our trustee Welshot leader!!) summed it up when she posted on Facebook, "absolutely shattered dot com" - To be fair I would have put it a lot stronger than that. Iceland is one of those places that you just never know what kind of weather is around the corner. Yes, its cold,  probably colder than we experienced last year, but at least this time it has been dry (-ish).

The complicated system of micro climates adds to the mystery of this beautiful island, you could be in perfect dry (yet cold) weather only to turn a corner and a full scale tornado hits you right in the face. Today was one of those days.

We ventured off to the Whale Fjords today. Its just about 1/2 hour out of Reykjavik, but its a hidden gem now due mainly to the construction of the road tunnel which saves motorists the 3-4 hour round trip journey. This area is a photographers dream with an abundance of Water, Abandoned Farms, Abandoned Factories, Waterfalls, Wildlife, Changing skies, Changing weather (OMG!) and loads of Ice.

You'll have to forgive me for the lack of place names in this post, but the wind was that strong the map blew out of my coat pocket and fell to the mercy of Thor - well the Whale Fjord anyway and there was no way I was risking falling on my backside when it flew across a frozen river and lodged on one of the rocks in the middle!! I'd already done a not so brilliant impersonation of Robin Cousins slipping on thick ice and falling on my backside.

First stop was Laxa i Kjos ....

Frozen river at Laxa i Kjos

Eifion was really impressed that I actually used my Lee graduated filters, the image above is out of camera with not one bit of Photoshop wizardry.

Stop 2, Frozen Waterfall - Hvalfjarðarvegur region gps co-ordinates 64.353039,-21.451991.....

Frozen Waterfall, Hvalfjarðarvegur region

Stop 3 was Lunch and hunger had hit in so no photos taken (sorry)

Stop 4, Abandoned Whale processing Factory (?). This would have been a photographers dream if it wasn't for the hammering wind which seemed to appear from nowhere. At this point, the tripod was ditched and I went hand held. The force of the wind was so strong that it actually blew my fully laden camera bag across the ground, thankfully it was completely zipped up.

Abandoned Whale Processing Plant

Rachel gets battered by the wind and almost blown back across the beach

Whale Bone (?) on the beach

Whaling Ships

When we left the Whaling area, the wind had become so strong it was very difficult to walk or stand up in it. I'd almost abandoned the idea of leaving the tour bus again as it looked like we weren't going to get the sunset we had been waiting for. Thor must have listened to us though and worked his magic as the setting sun cast a warm glow over the fjord.....

Final Pic of the day

However Thor sorted the clouds but ignored the wind, he left that in place with full force. The above pic was all I could manage to take (its very soft in some areas of the image).

Come on Thor, sort your magic out again for tomorrow ...... but this time make all of the nastiness for photographers go away!! (...and if you could switch on the Northern Lights for us we'd be eternally grateful!!)