Three Tips for Capturing Iceland’s Landscapes

When thinking about spectacular landscape photography, Iceland is unsurprisingly at the top of my list. It’s dramatic, the lighting can be beyond majestic, and the tiny island is teeming with landscapes that one is unlikely to find in other places on the planet. Thus, when capturing these incredible scenes, you are propelling your own photography and your ensuing album/portfolio into a new dimension of creativity.

If you are headed to Iceland and plan to take photos, with any camera, follow these simple yet highly effective tips to capture Iceland’s landscapes and showcase the wild beauty its best known for.

Enhance the Drama

Iceland is teeming with dramatic landscapes. The very essence of its lava fields, moss and lichen covered cliffs, and overall wild scenery are dramatic to begin with. However, by adding in extra elements of drama you can take the mystique, moodiness and dramatic vibe of your photos to another level.

One of my favorite ways to showcase the harshness and austerity of Iceland is to simplify the scene by embracing shadows, silhouettes and textures to my advantage. A key part of the drama of Iceland is indeed its harshness and allowing the jagged peaks, open vistas, and moody skies to dominate the scene allows this austerity to ring through.

In the above photo, I deliberately chose to shoot into the direction of the sun to capture the strong discord of light and shadows. For photographers, when we want to reveal a scene through our photographs, we typically like to have the sun at our backs, so that it evenly and properly illuminates the landscape.

However, if we flip this on its head and go into the sun we can use the brightness (often filtered through dramatic clouds) to create a monotone look and feel. This not only simplifies an otherwise overwhelming landscape, but it also allows the texture of the peaks to juxtapose nicely with things like smooth water, nearby sloping hillsides, and dramatic clouds. The brightness of the sky and sun also allows our camera to automatically darken the fore- and mid-ground, creating a lovely silhouette effect.

This also is an excellent way to confidently shoot at mid-day. Normally mid-day light yields harsh shadows and intense bright spots. But in this case, we want those elements in the shot! Also, choose a strong white balance, like cloudy or sunny (instead of auto) to inject strong warm or cool tones to help create a color theme to your photo.

Embrace Minimalism

Iceland, while intensely beautiful, could be characterized as desolate in some ways. Use this quality to your advantage and find single subjects in your scene, like the waterfall below, and use a telephoto lens (or zoom, if on a point and shoot) to minimize the number of ‘competing’ textures, colors and other elements in your scene.

What we get in the above photograph is unique. We have sweeping green vegetation surrounding a single waterfall pouring out of striking basalt rock. It is often tempting to zoom all the way in on a shot like this, to prominently feature this large waterfall, but instead we are shooting somewhat wide and making the waterfall to actually look somewhat small in an otherwise open landscape. Having the scene be made up predominantly (75% or so, in this case) of uniform, somewhat plain vegetation and gentle slopes helps showcase the expanse of the surroundings while creating pleasing shapes.

Similarly, we can fill the frame with water to embrace minimalism in another way. In the above photo, while the water is anything but boring, the repeated textures and patters that fill-the-frame in our scene creates a dramatic and minimal vibe.

Embracing minimalism in your photography is more about the percentage of a specific pattern or single feature in your scene, let’s say over 75%, to help emphasize a unique only-in-Iceland feature that causes the viewer to say “wow” the moment they see it.

Place People for Context and Scale

The above waterfall photos serves as an excellent example for this topic, too. When faced with other-worldly scenes, where quickly understanding scale and context is a challenge for the viewer, placing familiar objects in the scene is an excellent way to make a bigger impact with your photography.

While we all know what a waterfall is and what it looks like, it’s often difficult to understand the size of it. While people aren’t the only ‘familiar objects’ that help provide that scale and context, they are certainly the most available and oftentimes easiest to pose.

In the above photo, without the four hikers on the cliff, it would be hard to know if this waterfall was 20 feet or 80 feet. We may not even really know ‘what lies beyond’ the waterfall and the rest of the story.

However, by staying observant when photographing Godafoss, I noticed these hikers on the small trail above. This small but mighty addition to the photo takes it to another level, as it helps tell the rest of the story…how big it is (60-80 feet or so), whether this is the only view on an inaccessible cliffside (no, because you can hike around it!), all while putting the viewer there by allowing them to relate to the hikers and visualize themselves also exploring and marveling at this glorious setting.

In Summary

While these are three distinct tips, they can all be combined at once to really elevate your landscape photography in Iceland. The drama and minimalism is already there, you just have to hone your eyes and your photography to showcase it. Look for dramatic contrasts, both in light and in texture, while seeking uniform landscapes with a single subject for added emphasis. The subject may be a lone waterfall in the middle of a consistent landscape, or it may be one that you notice or place into the scene like a fellow traveler. The naturally occurring lights and darks of the black lava rock, white water, and verdant greens are already minimal and dramatic, but using light from the sun, filtered through clouds, will take your photos up another level very quickly.

And as a bonus tip, when faced with such unique lighting and wild landscapes, you can further create drama and minimalism by playing with your camera’s exposure settings to forcibly lighten or darken your photos. This is especially powerful when photographing into the sun or intentionally creating minimalism vibes. And this goes both ways–dramatically lighten or darken to see what you like best!

Because landscapes don’t move, you will have the time to experiment (especially on specialized photo trips to Iceland) and with practice you will no doubt return home with dramatic, evocative photos that you will cherish for a lifetime!

Go forward and give it a shot,

Court