The Icelandic Grains of Sand

In March I was able to lead a photo workshop in Iceland, which was a real highlight right at the beginning of the year! I was supported by Christina and Christian, which I am extremely happy about, because every workshop on Iceland has real challenges.

 

The first one started with the weather. Iceland, as always, did not make it easy. The weather forecast would be continuously scary, I've included a screenshot of my phone at the beginning of this week below for fun.

It also looked continuously - after that we could have safely left again 😅 But who knows this blog, knows that I have acquired in recent years to work with the satellite simulations, and that worked very well again here. With a 2-3 hour lead time, it is easy to work with. The group trusted me and was very flexible, which helped.

 

So we always managed to approach the spots at the time when there were precipitation or cloud-free zones on the radar. Of course, this only works if there are small gaps somewhere, but you usually have those on Iceland. In the end, we only had one day where we didn't take pictures because of the weather and we used that for a longer drive and a change of location.

 

We had a lot of fun and a great group with 6 workshop participants and one companion. In between everyone was pushed to their limits in terms of cold, storms, fatigue and lunchboxes, but after and during the sessions the enthusiasm was always high. The weather was very snowy for the first half of the trip and in the second half high temperatures washed away the snow. Fortunately, then also completely, because half thawed snow landscapes I feel especially on Iceland always as very unsettled.

 

We had some highlights, but I especially remember the one night when a spontaneous opportunity for northern lights photography came up. Actually we were already on our way to another spot, but I checked the weather every 20 minutes during the week and very shortly before departure to Vestrahorn (which we actually didn't want to take) a possible „window“ showed up. For this evening wind with up to 65 km/h was announced, however, we had rather 80 km/h with arrival, on Iceland there are often quite local amplifications of the wind.

 

We parked finally crosswise to the wind, in order to make possible the tripods at all to be able to stand to some extent straight, for the necessary long time exposure this was important. This worked, but the wind blew still lava sand under the cars upward.

 

However, the group endured the conditions and we were rewarded with beautiful northern lights, we were really happy. Only the lava sand we were allowed in the coming days still regularly remove from eyes, nose and ears 😅 For me, the group was called "the Icelandic grains of sand" since then 😅

 

All in all we had 6 photo days on location - on Saturday, before sunrise, we finally brought everyone safely to the airport, Christina and I stayed 1 day longer; we used this day to scout spots near Keflavik. There we also had a nice photo session in the evening.

 

I was also able to take some pictures myself. A first selection I would like to show you now and hope you have a lot of fun with it.

 

PS: If someone from the group gets lost on my blog, then I would like to send very warm greetings to "the grains of sand", to Petra, Nathalie, Sonni, Daniela, Werner and Karl-Heinz and Charlotte 😀 And of course to Christina and Christian, who have done a top job 👍

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Those were my impressions 😃

 

If someone else got the taste of a photo trip, then take a look at our travel partner: www.brockmann-phototravel.de

 

Also Christina and I offer at least 2 more trips this year.

 

Many greetings!

Thomas