Another night of cloud, and rain, and no Northern Lights!!! Bach to the ice beach at Jokulsarlon, and a couple of hours playing with the waves, the blocks of ice (which moved) at the same time as trying to keep dry and not fall over as you raced backwards and forwards on the beach.
The technique is as follows. You choose your block of ice, set your camera up, focus it and leave yourself some leeway on the depth of field etc. Make a mental note of where the tripod was, and then retreat until the wave has come in and has started going back down the beach. You then race in, put your tripod down – hopefully in the spot it was – and (with your shutter set to continuous shooting) and using a remote control, click away merrily. That’s the theory, that’s how the shot above was taken.
I soon tired of all that exercise, and wishing to keep my feet dry, and not wishing to look the fool as I fell over. I decided to be more passive and take moody shots of the ice blocks before the waves came in. Making focussing and depth of field my main consideration. That’s how I got the three shots that follow …
After our time on the beach, we went to take photos of the glacial lagoon – which is where I fell on a sheet of ice beside the car park and hurt my back. At this stage, I didn’t know how seriously, and I thought I’d recovered quite well. So much so, that I was able to get out of the coach quite easily to take these two photos of ponies – food photography as our Icelandic guide Thor called it!
However … on returning to the coach and in fastening my seat belt, my back went into spasm. The most painful thing I’ve ever experienced. I was taken to the medical centre in Hali, where it was assessed that I hadn’t broken anything, but the pain was still great, so I was prescribed some pretty strong pain killers and relaxants – they did work, thank goodness. That effectively was the end of my active photography on the trip. My gentle few steps from then on never taking me far from the coach.