The first snow at the reserve.
Friðland að Fjallabaki highlands, Central Iceland
A micro island covered by autumn vegetation in the middle of a glacial river.
Northern Iceland
This river has a wide delta stretching for more than a kilometer before entering the Atlantic ocean. The colorful surface - which you can see really only from the skies - is caused by sediments brought by the stream from the mountains and their interaction with the bedrock. I could fly there for hours… no, days… and still find mesmerizing new abstract views.
Braided river in Northern Iceland.
Northern Iceland
A glacial river, but it could also be a tree, a vein, a fractal, an ancient organism that lives its own life down there in the valley. From this height, the scale disappears, and we don't know whether the view is of a river or a vast riverbed stretching into the distance... and it doesn't matter.
For me, this photo is in the category of images that I sometimes purposely look for in a landscape - it's about the rhythm of shapes, colours, energies, contrasts in the whole and in the details... I sense a rhythm in it, I see something moving, dancing, I can hear it.... It's not a symphony with fixed rules, it's more like jazz, constantly changing, full of improvisation, where for example here each element of the river has its own motif and plays its own solo and you don't know what's coming in the next bar, but still all the instruments and their notes are connected by the same line. For me, the contrasts and blending here create music that you can't see but you can feel.
And I stand there as a silent observer, a listener to a concerto, played by masters for millennia. I'm not creating, just perceiving and sharing the experience. I'm humbled by the beauty and power that's happening in the shapes and colors... and all that jazz that's going on.
This photo is a crop of a huge 600 megapixel composite I made with my drone covering a larger area of the river. I then opened it at home, taking crops of the source image and looking for patterns and rhythms.
The first snow at the reserve.
Friðland að Fjallabaki highlands, Central Iceland
A pseudocrater covered by autumn moss.
North Eastern Iceland
It is not a classic volcanic crater because it is not "connected" to the magma in the earth and has never spewed lava. Still, these craters were created thanks to lava streams from nearby volcanoes flowing over a wet surface in the past, creating massive explosions of steam.
This was one of my last photos of the day. It was too late and very quickly the wind began to rise from the south (at the top of the photo), which brought a lot of clouds, fog and rain. My drone very much dislikes these conditions, so I took this picture and headed for the landing quickly.
A glacial delta river at the South Iceland coast.
South Eastern Iceland