It’s closing in…

On the far northern plateau of Iceland, while walking through a field close to a set of imposing mountains and too close to an imposing storm, I came across this old slaughterhouse. It smelled of metallic blood as strange wind ripped around it before the rain came down.

In the never-ending sunsets of Iceland, there is this field of geysirs that erupts unpredictably. Unlike Yellowstone, there are no ropes or paths or anything… one wrong step and you are in the center of the earth!

The area around the geothermal baths of Iceland is covered with hundreds of acres of the hardcore sinew of the planet. It’s black, pockmarked, fresh and raw earth. This is the part of the mid-atlantic rift that happens to be above ground and these spontaneous geothermal pools appear in the wild. As I approached the blue lagoon, I found this glistening powder blue pond (no color added — promise!) with the steam of other vents in the distance.

While driving back from northern Iceland, I came across this river as an evening storm was rolling in. I took some quick shots as little pellets of ice started to fall in my face.

This was shot in the docks of Reykjavik in Iceland… some ropes for mooring the icebreakers and fishing boats.

BTW, regular blog readers may or may not know you can click on any picture to go to my Flickr site where you can get the ultra-large versions…

I drove from one end of Iceland to the other by myself, going down almost any road except the main one. I traveled down a little gravel road for a long way until I found this tiny church and graveyard. I jumped out to shoot this before the afternoon showers came down.

Here is one of the first shots I took in Iceland. It’s of a geyser (only Icelandic word that made it into English, for some reason) called Strokkur. I think it is cool because it sounds like a sweet geyser and also like a rock band.

The second is another geyser that I think looks like a genie coming out of the bottle.

This is a river fed by the high mountains of Iceland. I took a trek across a field on a hunch that the river would have some nice curves and reflections.

While driving from one side of Iceland to the other in what was supposed to be winter, I spent a fair amount of time in the grassy inlands where some sort of heat inversion kept the ground green and fertile. I came across a few of these homes with these thick peat grassy rooftops.

Regular visitors to my stream or blog know that I do not add any colors to photos. I use all the natural light and photos that are really there. HDR certainly enhances them…

I found this spot while driving around lost in the south of Iceland while trying to find my way to the Blue Lagoon. This deep milky blue color is all over tiny streams and rivulets that bubble up everywhere across the rocky landscape.

The sunsets in the northern fjords of Iceland seem to last for hours. The sun does not go straight down, but it skips across the top and through the valleys of mountains as it slowly makes a sloping descent.

This place is available for only a few ISK and it’s begging for some of that Scandinavian furniture with clean lines.

I’ve retouched one of my older photos from Iceland of this cool horse near a fjord. I’ve been working at night on my next tutorial, which should be complete by Saturday this week. Below is an example of a fairly heavy but moody treatment.

Here you can see the North American Plate on the right and the Eurasion Plate on the left — both pulling apart from one another. This is in Thingvellir and the coolest example of plate tectonics I have ever seen. Before I saw this, I thought plate tectonics was just a silly “theory” like “evolution” and “opposable thumbs”.

This is also a big reason there is so much geothermal activity in Iceland - the opposable thumb bit.

It was bitter cold at the harbor in Reykjavik. Burly Icelandic fishermen looked at me suspiciously as I walked around with my camera and ipod through the ice and carp skeletons to find some interesting things…

Also we have a new advertiser this month over on the right, so feel free to check them out.