fstopandsee

Iceland has amazing sights and photo worthy spots everywhere, all the way from the mountains to the sea.

I wish I was feeling ice cold right now! It hit the 90s in the Bay Area today, much too hot for my liking. I’m thinking back to when I was on this amazing beach in Iceland two years ago. There is a huge bay surrounded by a glacier nearby where icebergs break off from the glacier and float out into the ocean. Small chunks wash up on the black sand beach, like this unique little bit of ice.

I’ll be honest, I’m not a big fan of horses. I’d rather walk or bike than ride a horse, but Icelandic horses make me think differently. Their main job must be to hang around and look very majestic. This group absolutely posed themselves just perfectly in this arrangement because they knew I was coming, no doubt about it!

In Iceland you expect to see ice and snow, but it is actually much more green and full of life than you might think. These colorful lupine were here to add some great contrast to the usual landscape of running water and snow.

It is hard to find a bad angle when you have both a waterfall and a unique mountain to work with! I didn’t waste any time and setup for this long exposure to get both the flowing water and the peak of Kirkjufell hiding in the clouds.

Iceland has many beautiful waterfalls, so many they apparently don’t bother to name them all! Not everything is in a name as this waterfall had some absolutely freezing but photo worthy water swirling all around it.

High on my list of things to see in Iceland was the puffins. I waited in this spot for quite some time but only saw them flying pretty far away. After a few more moments of patience they started popping out of their nests in the ground literally all around us! I can confirm they are even better looking in person than they are in this image.

You might look at this photo and see some interesting basalt sea stacks and a beautiful black sand beach. What I see is waiting and waiting and waiting, an extreme exercise in patience as I waited for the moment when no one else was standing or climbing on these rocks. It paid off, and I’m glad I didn’t have to decide if I should photoshop people out of the shot or not!

Iceland might be named for its icy glaciers, but I found it to be the land of waterfalls, or foss in Icelandic. We could barely drive a few miles without seeing a beautiful waterfall. While at Goðafoss I took the chance to get a close up to the moving water on the side of this massive waterfall and take this shot.

Going all the way around an entire country, even if it is a small one like Iceland, requires a lot of driving. The roads go through the wild and varied landscape of Iceland, which meant I was never bored along the way. The bigger problem I had was trying not to stop at every beautiful vista, because if I had I’d never have gotten home!