Hot pools, Reykjanes penninsula, 2 am, an hour after we landed in Iceland, shot with the Lumix GF1.

I’m back since two days from my two week holiday/ stock shooting journey through the mysterious Iceland, the land of sagas, vulcanos and most recently also famous for some massive financial crisis. It has been a blast and after two weeks with barely any cellphone or internet access it is hard to get back into the digital world again, i can tell ya. So i take it slow today and only give you this one impression above from the first night in Iceland. In the next weeks i will upload some of the series i shot during the trip. It was an interesting learning process as i’m for sure not the classic landscape photographer. I’m too inpatient to sit for hours and wait for the right light and getting up at 5 in the morning to catch the best light (even when there is always light at this time of the year in Iceland..) is for sure not to be considered as one of my favorite things to do. So i was pushing myself to try out, experiment, learn new things and push myself in some new directions. The great thing about that process is always that it at the end makes you richer in what you see and gives you more knowledge in how to shoot it. And this is something what is helpful for all my photography. And i learned a lot, also about other parts of my photography that i normally shoot and how i might push it in the future. Inspiration not only comes from what you normally shoot, it mainly comes when you leave your comfort zone to try new things.

At the end I had a hard time from time to time to focus on the landscapes and not spent days on telling some of the extraordinary stories of the people along the way, but it was also holiday in it’s major purpose. I will for sure get back as soon as possible to work on some stories, like this wonderful, totally chaotic old bookstore and it’s owner or the iceseaswimmer society or the Haitian woman now living in Reykjavik and many other things. Iceland is for sure amazing in it’s pure and raw nature and the perfect place to forget time and space around you, but all this stories are one of the reasons why it became such a rich trip, filled with life and at the end not only left me in awe of the nature at the end.

Always great to get back there. But now it’s time to jump back on track here and dive into emails, projects, applications, editing and other things to be done.