In early June, we headed to Iceland for an 18-day photo trip. If you have visited Iceland yourself, you will not be surprised to hear that the weather was quite challenging and we had to completely change our plans in response. While we hoped to take our rental 4x4 campervan into the interior highlands, we ended up mostly sticking to the Ring Road because of rain, relentless wind, and quite a bit of late-season snow. Despite these challenges, we still had a lot of fun experiences, including visiting a puffin colony in the snow, photographing Iceland's incredible river deltas, and seeing a perfectly peak lupine bloom across the southern portion of the country (this non-native lupine is invasive but still quite beautiful to see).
I have collected my photos from the trip into a 129-page PDF ebook portfolio, which you can download for free without any sign-up or checkout required. Below is the brief essay I include at the beginning of the ebook, along with a handful of the 100+ photos included in the full portfolio.
Sarah and I made five trips to Iceland from 2012 to 2016, and wrote the now discontinued location guide Forever Light: The Landscape Photographer’s Guide to Iceland in 2013 to cover the gaps in navigating its unique landscape. During those five years we witnessed dramatic changes to Iceland as a result of skyrocketing tourism. Fast-forward to 2024, and even out-of-the-way spots are now on Google Maps with hundreds (or thousands) of reviews. Locations that were off the beaten path now have paid parking lots, and most of the empty spots on the map have been filled in and heavily documented. A place as wondrous as Iceland was not going to remain undiscovered for long.
Some photographers thus claim that Iceland is “over-shot,” a familiar accusation levied at any location that landscape photographers proliferate. As if it is the landscape’s fault for how it is photographed. As if there are only a finite number of possible photographs that can be taken in a country (or any location) with endless opportunities. As if they should reject the experience and thrill of seeing an island whose density of glaciers, rivers, waterfalls, dramatic fjords, volcanic black sand beaches, and geothermal activity is unmatched on Earth, only because other people happened to arrive there first. While Iceland is no longer undiscovered, plenty of discovery remains.
These photographs are from our 18-day trip in early June 2024, our first visit to Iceland in eight years, and our first spring trip since our initial visit twelve years ago. The weather was, as is typical in Iceland, often uncooperative and resembled winter more than spring, but that’s part of the charm.
If you would like to see the full collection of photos, you can download the free portfolio ebook here.
