Iceland - Landmannalaugar Wall
I’ll admit that this is a bit of avoidance behavior. I’ve tried on several occasions to start on the Iceland trip posts, only to feel stuck and just move onto working on individual images that caught my eye. Fortunately, there were several (read: quite a few) images from our two trips to Landmannalaugar that called out to me and were, in a word, satisfying to work on. Might as well compile them for a blog post! As I said, avoidance behavior, productive avoidance behavior.
Towards the end of our loop hike with Judy and John at Landmannalaugar, the trail dropped down into this small ravine as it worked its way back to camp. From the higher elevations of the trail we could see these interesting green-colored soil portions of the ravine walls, only to discover as we descended some even more interesting gray walls that lay on either side of the green section we’d seen from above.
After taking a couple of landscape images, I started focusing on close-up images. There’s something about raising a camera to your eye and framing a section of the landscape in isolation that can transform it into something . . . different.
Sometimes the images are just details of a larger landscape.
You can see the features of a landscape, even get a sense of scale of what you’re looking at.
But other times the landscape turns into forms and shapes and colors, however subtle
And sometimes they turn into pure abstractions.
So I kept at it while we walked down the ravine.
Slowly taking my time to see what was before me.
Composing and recomposing images each time my eye saw something new. As I said, it was only a stretch of the ravine and eventually we were past it.
But on our return trip to Landmannalaugar, both Ann and I wanted to get back to that ravine, so we did going up into the ravine from basecamp. And the images from the second visit were just as rewarding.
These second-round images tend to be a bit more abstract, . . .
. . . and a bit more tightly framed.
They become an enjoyable search for visually interesting forms in the landscape. As close to play as it gets with a camera.
And sometimes it’s as if you’re looking at an abstract painting created by nature.
I often wonder whether making these types of images is too easy, too enjoyable, and that I should work towards making more traditional landscape images.
But the truth is, they aren’t easy to see and they sometimes fail miserably when you’re not working hard and thinking carefully about the image while you’re making it. So why shouldn’t I make them? It’s all part of the work of seeing
And if when we go somewhere a second time and it’s just as visually exciting, you just have to work the subject!