Archives For Iceland

Beautiful Iceland

Varina Patel —  May 18, 2012

The sky was beautiful – but not over the waterfall I had planned to shoot. What to do? Well, that’s an easy one. MOVE! Go shoot where the light is right! :)

There you go. That’s my piece of advice for the day. Brilliant, eh?

Seriously though. I took this shot while we were in Iceland… (You can check out our trip report for day 7 if you haven’t read it before.)

The shot you see here is not the one I was waiting for… but I’m perfectly happy with that. Nature photographers don’t get to adjust the lighting to their specifications. We’re stuck with what we get. On this morning in Iceland, I was all set up and ready to shoot the sunrise over some beautiful waterfalls. But the sun wasn’t particularly interested in lighting up the sky over the falls. Instead, it put on a pretty little show over this mountain in the distance. I was uninspired by the foreground, so I took off my wide-angle lens, and replaced it with a 70-200mm. Then, I zoomed in to capture the beautiful colors in the sky and the dusting of snow on the mountain. It had just snowed the night before, so I was able to capture the beauty of the snow contrasting against the stark lava slopes.

I’m not disappointed. In fact, this is one of the things I love about nature photography. You never know what you’ll come away with! I was expecting to get a shot of those waterfalls… and I could see the shot in my mind. I didn’t get that shot… but I came home with something entirely different.

When only a small area of the sky is rich with color, that’s a great time to pull out a long lens. With a wide angle lens, this small area of color would seem insignificant within the frame. With a long lens, I can fill the entire frame with color! Bang on!

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Singin’ the Blues

Varina Patel —  April 3, 2012


Iceland was incredibly beautiful… and one of my very favorite locations was this gorgeous beach at Jökulsárlón. I think you can see why. I would have liked to spend far more time shooting these small icebergs. I guess we’ll just have to go back for another trip! (If you haven’t already seen it, you can find our trip report here on our blog.)

Anyway – the challenges for this shot included wind and rain, keeping the tripod still as the waves pulled at it and shifted the sand underneath, and getting a shot before the iceberg floated away!

I shoved the legs of my tripod deep into the sand to steady it and chose a 30 second exposure. It was getting dark at this point, but I was happy with that. I wanted a very long exposure to smooth the water behind the iceberg. My goal was to make sure the ice in the foreground stood out as much as possible against a simplified background. The long shutter speed removed any details from the waves, leaving me with a clean backdrop for my giant ice cube.

The intense blue is a result of the long exposure, the extremely low light, the overcast skies, and careful post processing.

Well – what do you think? Did I oversimplify this shot? Or do you like the effect of the long shutter speed?

I really can’t wait to get to Iceland again!

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Rainbow in the Mist

Varina Patel —  February 14, 2012

I took this shot of Skógafoss with a 70-200mm lens, a circular polarizer, and a neutral density filter. I needed a longish shutter speed to blue the surface of the water in bright conditions, so that the rainbow would stand out against a smooth background. The neutral density filter helped with that – and the polarizer allowed me to increase the shutter speed even more, while also helping to bring out the brilliant colors in the rainbow. With both filters, I could reduce the shutter speed to .6 seconds at f/11. Just enough to smooth the water to my liking.

This was such a beautiful location – but the climb was steep. After my little run-in with the icebergs the day before, I couldn’t climb the hill… so I stayed behind. At first I planned to just sit back and enjoy the beautiful sunshine while I waited, but the more I looked at the falls, the more I wanted to shoot it. The view from below wasn’t very exciting… I wanted something a little different. And this is the result. This was the best weather of the entire trip, too. Warm and sunny! Such pleasure after yesterdays difficulties!

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Featured Download: Rainbows in the Mist

Jay Patel —  February 9, 2012

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This beautiful place is a tourist hot-spot in Iceland. A steep trail provides access to the mighty Skógafoss waterfall. The view gets better and better as you get closer to the fallsl. If you ever get a chance to visit Skógafoss, don’t forget your camera – and be sure to take some time to climb to the top of the falls. Click on the image above to download the image for your desktop background.

As always, these images are provided for personal use as computer wallpaper or backgrounds ONLY. Copyright belongs to the photographer, and photographs cannot be used, redistributed, or recreated in print or on the web or on any other medium without written permission from the photographer.

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Featured Download: Iceberg

Varina Patel —  January 26, 2012

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Jökulsárlón was, without question, my favorite of the places we visited on our first trip to Iceland. I wanted an incredible simple composition for this image – so I chose a single iceberg as my point of interest, and used a long shutter speed to blur the waves. The clean shades of blue simplified the image even further. A short time later, I was reminded of the awesome (and dangerous) power of nature – but for the moment, I tried to capture the incredible peace and tranquility of this beautiful scene. I hope you enjoy it!

As always, these images are provided for personal use as computer wallpaper or backgrounds ONLY. Copyright belongs to the photographer, and photographs cannot be used, redistributed, or recreated in print or on the web or on any other medium without written permission from the photographer.

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Featured Download: Iceland Blues

Jay Patel —  January 12, 2012

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Jökulsárlón in Iceland is a breathtaking place. On one side of the road is a beautiful blue, glacial lagoon. On the other side is a black sand beach where giant icebergs lie scattered along the shore. This beauty come with its own peril – I found out the hard way. Right after I took this shot, a rogue wave knocked my off my feet and pushed me underwater. I managed to hold on to my Canon 5D MKII and tripod, but both the camera and lens were destroyed. Thank goodness for my backup camera! And the memory card was not damaged… so I didn’t lose any photographs. Thank goodness! (For more about that singularly disastrous day in Iceland, see Iceland: Day 5.)

As always, these images are provided for personal use as computer wallpaper or backgrounds ONLY. Copyright belongs to the photographer, and photographs cannot be used, redistributed, or recreated in print or on the web or on any other medium without written permission from the photographer.

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Ten Seconds To Takedown

Varina Patel —  January 3, 2012

Some of you have asked to see the photo of the wave that took me out on our Iceland trip, so I went ahead an processed it for you. It’s not one of my favorites from the trip… but half a minute later I was blacking out on the beach… so, I guess I’ll keep the photo as a reminder of the power of nature.

See that big wave coming in out there? That’s the wave that would take me out ten seconds later. At this point, I still thought I was ok. I was ready to back off if I needed to – but I didn’t feel threatened. You can see that there is a bit of water at my feet – but not enough to worry me. I assumed that the pull of one wave retreating would substantially reduce the power of the incoming wave… as had been happening all morning.

Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. The water at my feet didn’t pull back – you can see that it is shifting to my left. The next wave came in, climbed past me up the beach, and I pulled back to get out of the water. I realized I couldn’t move fast enough, so I braced myself to avoid being dragged under. No problem. The waves gently picked up all those pretty pieces of ice, and they floated past me. And then, the waves reached their peak – and in a rush, they returned to the sea. All those giant ice cubes shifted direction and came straight for me. An incredible impact to my right knee took me down. The tripod and camera ended up underwater – along with my f-stop bag, and the iphone in my pocket. I was hit by at least four icebergs… but I only remember that first one.

Anyway – it was a rough morning. If you haven’t read the whole story, you can check out our Iceland: Day 5 post.

… and here’s the photo from the takedown itself. I don’t remember hitting the shutter release, but the image was on my card when I thought to look. Kinda pretty isn’t it?

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Myrdal Jokull, Iceland

Review: Canon 24mm TS-E F3.5L II

Jay Patel —  November 21, 2011

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Last week, we reviewed Canon’s 90mm TS-E lens – one of two lenses we rented from LensRentals.com for our recent trip to Iceland. We’ve been considering purchasing a tilt-shift lens, and wanted to try these our before making a final decision. Renting a lens is the perfect solution, and Lens Rentals does a great job for us, every time.

We posted a video in our earlier blog post that gives a breif overview of how a TS-E lens works. You can view the video at:

http://www.youtube.com/user/DigitalRevCom#p/search/0/0HRYlJUwzYA

Once again in this review we will focus on creative aspects of using TS-E lenses, rather than focusing on technical reviews.

Canon’s 24mm TS-E is a second generation lens. Besides improvement in sharpness, Canon adapted the lens to allow the tilt and shift axis to rotate independently of one another. This allows for an extra degree of creative controls that was missing in the first generation lens… and we love it! Unlike Canon’s 17mm TS-E lens (which has a bulbous front element), this lens can easily accommodate 82mm filters. On the downside, this lens is heavy and requires manual focusing. The lens hood is of limited use because this is a wide-angle lens… but it does come in handy at times. The lens is incredibly sharp, and the build is excellent. There is some reduced sharpness at the edges when the lens is fully shifted.

One of the biggest advaintage of a T/S lens is its ability to control the DOF beyond what a traditional lens can handle. While the exact procedure requires some experimentation, a T/S lens can allow a photographer to get very close to the subject and maintain a sharp focus throughout the image. In this example, I used the tilt functionality to get the foreground sharply in focus, and used the shift axis to compose my shot so that the foreground leaves were only inches away from my lens.

Another creative way to use a T/S lens is to build panoramas by moving the lens along its shift axis between exposures. Here is an example of a panorama captured with Canon’s 24mm TS-E lens. I took three separate shots – one at center, a second shifted all the way to the left, and a third shifted all the way to the right. I blended the three shots in Photoshop.

Canon’s 24mm TS-E F3.5L II lens offers an incredible opportunity to get creative. This is another expensive lens – and it’s different from what you are used to – so unless you are really sure you want it, take the time to try it out before you buy one.

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90mmTS

Review: 90mm F2.8 TS-E lens

Jay Patel —  November 17, 2011

For our recent trip to Iceland, we rented a couple of lenses once again – from LensRentals.com. Their service was excellent, as always. We placed the order a couple of weeks before we left, and the lenses arrived clean and in perfect condition – in plenty of time for us to get them packed up and ready to go. We highly recommend their services – and we know several other photographers who’ve rented from them as well. I haven’t heard any complaints yet! Renting lenses is a great way to get your hands on a lens to try it out before making an expensive purchase.

So, let’s get to it!

A tilt shift lens is a specialty lens that allows the photographer to control perspective without tilting the camera – instead, they can actually tilt the elements within the lens itself. You can also adjust the plane of focus so that everything within the plane is in sharp focus… or so that only a small area is in focus. Here’s a nice little video from Digital Rev TV that gives a really nice, basic overview of what you can do with one of these lenses.

http://www.youtube.com/user/DigitalRevCom#p/search/0/0HRYlJUwzYA

This is a very compact and light-weight lens that comes with an integrated lens hood. It is one of the sharpest prime lenses we have used – it’s beautifully sharp even wide open. The lens is really solid – it’s well built, and made to last… which is pretty important, since it’s selling for about $1300.00. (Yet another reason to rent!)

There’s very little distortion with this lens, and you shouldn’t have problems with flare unless you are shooting directly into the sun. One of the drawbacks of this lens is that the axis of shift and the axis of tilt remained locked with respect to one another….we hope Canon will choose to correct this issue with newer models. And the knobs are also really little! Which makes them a bit difficult to adjust if your fingers aren’t very small.

A T/S lens can be used in variety of creative ways to capture images. Rather than focusing on the technical aspects of how to use the lens, we want to point out some of the creative ways you can use it.

First of all – it can be used just like any other lens… here’s a shot I took using LiveView to manually focus. (It’s important to note that this lens does not have auto-focus capabilities.) Because it’s a compact lens, I was able to sprint a half-mile with my camera and tripod to capture the gorgeous light over the mountains in Iceland.

On of our favorite uses for this lens is in creating panoramas. The process is simple. You set up your first shot as you would normally – and snap a photo. Then, you adjust the lens along it’s shift axis to the left and right to complete the panorama. Here is an example of a panorama series. After the images were captured, we combine them in Photoshop for the finished effect.

Another interesting aspect of the TS lens is it’s ability to isolate a subject by adjusting the plane of focus. The shot you see below shows how tilting the lens axis blurs the area in front of and behind the subject. This is a neat way to isolate a subject within the frame.

 

This lens is great for photographing small objects – think how cool it would be to shift your plane of focus so that all the petals of the flower you are shooting are within the plane of focus… without shooting the flower from above! We loved it for super-sharp panoramas and isolating subjects within the field of view. We don’t recommend the lens if you don’t feel comfortable with a learning curve. Tilt shift lenses are very different from conventional lenses, and making the most of them requires practice and experimentation! If you are up for a challenge – rent one and see how you like it! I think we’ll rent this one again… it’s entirely too much fun to play with!

TS/E lenses offer an incredible opportunity to explore your creative side. What would you do if you get your hands on one? :)

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Iceland: Day 8

Varina Patel —  November 9, 2011

Tired or not – I snapped awake at 3am. Time to check for the Aurora. I could see from the window that the sky was clear in the North! Stars! So, I got myself dressed, grabbed my gear, and headed to the lobby to see what I could see. This was our last, best chance to capture the Aurora on this trip. Every other night was completely clouded in.

Unfortunately, it was not to be. We used the hotel wireless connection to watch satellite data as it updated over the course of two hours… checking the sky frequently. No luck. Iceland was just outside the range of the Aurora. At 5, we gave up our vigil and headed back to bed for one more hour of sleep.

In the morning, we drove out to shoot the waterfalls once again – but although the sunrise was beautiful, the sky directly over the falls wasn’t very photogenic. Jay walked out into the lave fields and photographed the beautiful, glowing clouds.

I hoped to capture some of that brilliant color over a crater in the distance. I grabbed a long lens, and ran… well… it was more of a long, painful stumble on my injured leg… to some nearby lava boulders. I climbed as high as I could – which wasn’t very high… and I missed the colors entirely. I did get a nice shot of the early morning light at it painted the snow on the crater.


Afterward, we all packed up our gear and started the long drive back to Reykjavík. We were looking forward to a relaxing swim in the Blue Lagoon before our long flights home… and relaxing it was. The water is a lovely blue – and so wonderfully warm. The heat felt fantastic on my bruised legs. What a treat.

Unfortunately, while smearing our faces with smooth, volcanic cream masks (provided for visitor use in the pool area, and sold in the gift shops), Jay’s wedding ring slipped off his finger. All of us searched for it – scooping black pebbles and smooth sand from the bottom of the lagoon. No luck. Jay’s ring will remain at the bottom of the blue lagoon. He was so sad to lose it!

After a quick shower, we returned our rental cars and took a shuttle to the airport. We shared a delicious lunch before scattering to catch our flights. We flew from Iceland to JFK in New York, then caught our next flight to Pittsburg. We were too tired to drive the final leg of our trip, so we grabbed a hotel room for the night.

Tomorrow, we’ll rise bright and early, and drive home. And then we’ll pack up two camera bodies and three lenses to send in for repairs. And return the two (miraculously unharmed) lenses we rented from LensRentals.com for this trip. And replace my water-damaged iPhone. And go find Jay a new wedding ring! And I’ll get some x-rays to make sure I haven’t done any serious damage to my knee.

What a trip!

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