So after many weeks and countless hours of preparation and thanks to the help of Olympus AU I’ve finally made it to Iceland. And in the very first episode of the new video series: Adventure Photography On Location I’m taking you along from Budapest to Iceland all the way into a canyon on the Snaefellsnes Peninsula in the far west of Iceland.
Future episodes are in the making and I will be publishing them as I keep travelling through Iceland and the Faroe Islands. You can expect different locations, a waterfall shoot, a skateboard shoot, a 4×4 off road shoot and a kayak shoot.
As mentioned in the video, these are a ‘building as I go – run and gun style shoot and I’m always open to new ideas, suggestions and your feedback.
For this very first location we went to a crack/canyon/cave on the side of the mountain near Arnarstapi. The location is called Rauðfeldsgjá.
It’s about a 5min walk up from where you park to the entrance of the canyon on the mountain side and if you don’t mind getting your feet a little wet you can just walk upstream into the canyon. I explored about 100m up into the canyon before deciding that the light was best in the front section just beyond the entrance.
I also hit a 3m waterfall up there and the only way beyond that was up a rope hanging down the falling water. No thanks with camera gear. So I stayed near to the entrance.
It was definitly a place for a wide lens and after shooting a lot of my images with the M.Zuiko 7-14mm f/2.8 PRO I even got out my M.Zuiko 8mm f/1.8 fisheye PRO.
It’s always tricky to use a fisheye lens, but in places like these where there’s no straight lines anywhere the distortion doesn’t really matter so much and if I didn’t tell you, you’d probably not be able to say that it was shot on a fisheye lens.
Even though the fisheye is 8mm and the wide angle starts at 7mm, the fisheye has a greater field of view. So it shows even more of the things going on around you.
Later on the clouds dropped so low they were hanging all around the canyon and the light became much softer. We switched up models & jackets and tried similar compositions to the first shots as well as moved outside to the front section of the cave for some more shots.
Personally I prefer the moody, misty shots over the brighter ones. Much more atmospheric. I’m glad we stuck around for that.
Although with the low clouds came the rain and soon I was drenched (since my yellow jacket was in front instead of behind the camera. Keeping the lenses dry was a challenge too, but I found that the Zeiss cleaning kit I had bought for this trip came in super useful. The lens cloth did a great job at wiping the drops off the lens all the way until it was, just like me, soaked.
Not that much gear was used to shoot these images. It was a pretty minimal shoot really.
In the video you can see me wearing my f-stop Ajna and MountainSmith Lumbar Pack for quick and easy access to the items I need regularly. These would be my 2 camera bodies, extra lenses, cleaning kit and filters – adapted to the shoot I’m doing.
Gear List:
Olympus OM-D E-M1 – http://bit.ly/2kwIkf7
M.Zuiko 8mm f/1.8 fisheye PRO – http://bit.ly/2kgCFeW
M.Zuiko 7-14mm f/2.8 PRO – http://bit.ly/2kgKjWo
Peak Design camera straps – http://amzn.to/2Bm5b40
Zeiss lens cleaning kit – http://amzn.to/2rvqj89
MountainSmith Lumbar Pack – http://amzn.to/2DswFXC
Same story for the gear used to film this episode. Not much. Minimal Run and Gun style.
We filmed it all handheld and at 25fps at full HD. Sound was either recorded with the built in microphone or the iPhone lapel microphone. Hoping to upgrade the on camera microphone to a gun microphone.
Gear List:
Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II – http://bit.ly/2ldtCZW
M.Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8 PRO – http://bit.ly/2jSoIA9
Lee circular polarising filter 62mm – http://amzn.to/2rw7fqr
iPhone microphone – http://amzn.to/2G4Ltxb
iPhone 6 for audio recording (partially)
All my images I shoot in RAW which on the down side results in a very flat and grey looking image. But on the upside it gives me much greater freedom in when editing the images.
I edit my images with Adobe Lightroom. I use a general preset I’ve created to achieve a certain colour palette and then I adjust my images further from there. I’ll talk about image editing in future episodes. So stay tuned for that.
Below a few selected images with before and after:
LEFT: RAW image out of camera. – RIGHT: the edit
A kayak shoot, a skateboarding shoot, a 4×4 off road shoot and a few more location shoots.
If you enjoyed the video or have any suggestions for future videos please leave a comment below and I’ll try and improve / add the ideas into future episodes and don’t miss out on future episodes by subscribing here to my newsletter as well as my brand new YouTube channel.
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Iceland is definitely on my bucket list. When you mentioned that you had a skateboard my mind immediately went to the movie “The Secret Life of Water Mitty”. God I loved that movie. ?Looking forward to the rest of your travels mate.
Thanks Mykal,
Yep the skateboard will definitly be used on ‘that’ Walter Mitty road haha. Haven’t had the perfect light yet to really get it out… But with a week to go I’m hoping we see some more of that magical Iceland light.
Great Blog. Nice to see the thoughts behind the photos. Clever use of a model too. Also nice to see some of the LR work. I was really disappointed with the EM5ii RAW files when I first saw them in LR. The adobe Camera Neutral and Vivid presets are ok but still feel as if they are lacking something.
Hi Denver,
Thanks for your comment.
I’ve found that over the last months I’ve really discovered that there is so much more to the RAW files than I ever thought I knew. This doesn’t count just for the Olympus cameras. I think it’s more in general. I don’t think a RAW file should all be about recovering details etc. It’s the flexibility in colour that’s almost just as important!
I don’t personally use Adobe presets, so I can’t really comment on those. But I’m almost certain that with a little bit of tweaking and adjusting you will get more out of those files.
Hi Chris
Will you be chasing the Northern Lights and if so do you have a chosen location? My daughter and I are going to Iceland in April for 3 days (we are going home to Scotland for a wedding hence the short visit) having only 3 days a pre arranged destination would be a great help.
Would love to see some Puffins as well.
Love your photography 🙂
Anne
Hi Anne,
Thanks for your comment and for your kind words. Much appreciated!
I don’t think I’ll be chasing the Northern Lights since it’s quite uncommon to see them in August. I believe that it’s just not quite dark enough… but please – someone correct me on this!
I think I read somewhere that Puffins should be around during April. If you’re going near Reykjavik I’d visit the Golden Circle. It’s close by and you can do day trips there and there’s a ton of awesome things to see. And the Snaefelssnes peninsula isn’t too far away from Reykjavik either – that should be doable in a day trip too.
Hope that helps.
Chris
Lovely blog and nice video. Thanks for sharing this detailed information.
Thanks for the comment and kind words Ian! Much appreciated! 🙂
Great video & great explanations on the way you shoot your pictures. Gets a very personal touch to the work you’re doing 🙂
Looking forward to seeing more videos of your travels!
Take care!
Hey Mark!
Thanks for the comment. Means a lot!
Love the openness and honesty of this. Really puts things into perspective as to the amount of work and thought that goes behind the scenes. I’m an aspiring photographer myself and would love to turn that passion into some form of a career. I’m also self-taught, but need to obviously invest more time in practicing to get to your level. Any practical advice you can give in making a living out of it would be greatly appreciated… In the meantime I’ll read up and your blog. From what I have read so far, a lot of gems in there
Cheers,
David
Hello David,
Thanks so much for the kind words mate. Really means a lot!
I’m aiming to create a series of videos that show exactly that: the work and thought that goes into a photo / photo series before, during and after the job/adventure. I’ve been getting the impression that people think that photographs are just ‘right place at the right time’ sort of thing and that it’s all easy as long as you pick up the most expensive camera out there… hopefully the new video series clears that myth out of the way haha
If you have any specific questions regarding photography please don’t hesitate to email me (through the contact form here on the website) and I’ll do my best to give specific answers to you.
Cheers,
Chris