Photographer’s Dream – Iceland

UPDATE: I now have a gallery of Iceland images

I’m always looking for interesting locations to shoot, and over the past few years I noticed quite a few of my peers visiting Iceland and producing some amazing images. I visited there in the Summer with a model, as that gave the most hours of daylight, meaning that we could hopefully wait out or avoid any bad weather, as the weather there can be notoriously changeable. A friend recently returned from a week’s holiday in Iceland, and it rained virtually all day, every day, fortunately we were much luckier with the weather.

Different models suit different locations, and I thought the perfect model for this trip would be the superb Lulu Lockhart. I knew we get on very well together, which is important for multi-day trips, and I think she is a perfect model for location work.

All of the main glacier areas were very busy with tourists, but we found a great spot to show off a glacier as well as Lulu.

Iceland’s volcanic past and the fact that it’s the meeting place of tectonic plates produces some great backdrops.

Apart from a few green patches, in many areas it felt like we were on the moon. Lulu did a wonderful job here where it must have been extremely uncomfortable on the very sharp rocks, my job was to produce a good composition and here I tried to make her look like one of the mountains in the background.

More moon-like rocks with an amazing background.

The light was stunning, and with such a great location and model I often went for wider shots.

Sometimes I went for a closer-up shot of Lulu, but still tried to show the beauty of the magnificent surroundings.

As it was Summer, and a relatively warm Summer, there was less snow than usual, but I made Lulu climb up to it ;)

The waterfalls are amazing, but unfortunately very busy with tourists, especially as this was the peak of the tourist season. This is where it helps to have a model you work with well, and you can get the shots in very short periods of time. This is literally one of the most popular waterfalls next to a very busy campsite. It was cold, wet and slippery on that rock, but Lulu was a star, it’s at times like this that I am reminded why I work with her so much.

More amazing rock formations.

And while some of the other shots look like the moon, this one was in a very volcanic region and looks like what I imagine Mars to be. There was ice and steam at 100 degrees all within metres from each other, plus hundreds of tourists of course!

There’s many more shots to come from this trip, but I think this gives a good idea of what an amazing location Iceland is.

I often say what a great job a model has done, but on this occasion Lulu was just awesome, this was a very special trip and I can’t thank her enough for all she endured and all her hard work to ensure that we got so many wonderful images.