Iceland - Hverir Again
Our second trip to Hverir started much like our first - promising light - but even colder and windier than it was during our first trip. Knowing what happened the first time (bad weather with low hanging clouds and rain moving in during our shooting), we started out photographing the parts of the site we missed out on the previous occasion. The sun was low and casting a nice red glow, despite the clouds and the wind.
While the cloudy skies above the park itself quickly blew away, the scattered clouds to the east and the north remained. While that meant that images of the main hillside that ultimately occupied much of Ann’s and my attention had cloudless blue skies, it meant that the light on the hillside was constantly changing, so all we had to do once we had a composition was to wait for the light conditions to change to the most favorable for the image (usually somewhere in the transition between shadowless cloud cover and unfiltered sunlight).
We both took several images, some of mixed success and increasingly focused on the parts of the landscape that the now-appearing visitors were not wandering through (admittedly, most of the early folks were photographers too so . . . ).
Still, there were a variety of images to be made. But as the sun began to rise farther, the subtle qualities of the landscape started to disappear (as is common for such environments).
As we headed back towards the bimobil, I saw one final image from the parking lot and set umps camera. Then we waited for nearly 20 minutes for the sun to rise above a massive cloud resting on the horizon. Once the transition started, I began making one exposure after another until a few seconds later when the entire area was hit by brilliant sunlight. One of those images was bound to be acceptable.
At that point, there were no more clouds to filter the light and we decided it was time to move on. It was a successful start for the day!