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“And what began as a dream, becomes reality, becomes memory…” – Ed Lehming So, concludes my Iceland Journal (this one at least),as it began, an image of vast stretches of wondrous, raw, and ever changing landscape. It has been a real joy going back through my photos, triggering memories of moments, which I have been able to document and share. And so, I end this chapter of the story, as we end… Read More
“We went down into the silent garden. Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. Everything is transfixed, only the light moves.” ― Leonora Carrington The light in Iceland is incomparable, it possesses a magical quality and softness that simply pervades everything. I think, in part, is was partially due to the time of year, late October, when we visited. The sun never gets up very high and wonderful shadows… Read More
“The clouds roll in, but don’t persist, they bring a welcome contrast and make us more aware of how lovely the sunshine is.” – Ed Lehming I really can’t imagine Iceland without its marvelous clouds. During our ten-day trip, every day had some cloud. Often, there are multiple layers, each slightly different and moving in different directions, creating a magical yet fleeting, play of light. As a photographer, the quality of light… Read More
“I take pleasure in solitude, many see me as distant but only few know it’s when I’m most alive.” ― Nikki Rowe On day eight of our Icelandic tour, we headed inland from Borgarnes towards Geyser. The trip took us around a fjord still used as a whale processing area, with a large plant at the farthest end of the fjord. The plant was notable for the many talks along the surrounding will… Read More
“It was dusk and the light had an ultra-violet quality to it, a final burst of pigmentation as night and day rushed at each other in a clash of colour prisms before darkness finally, inevitably won out.” ― Karen Swan Though much of our trip was filled with the overcast, misty, and often gloomy light of autumn, we were, on this occasion greeted with the magnificent colours of an Icelandic sunset. On our… Read More
“From the deep places of the earth, pours forth a cool purity few can fathom” – Ed Lehming The mere sight of these falls brought freshness to my day. There is something in flowing water; a virtual baptism and washing away of the days heaviness happens, and the joy of simply living in such a marvelous world is reaffirmed. This is yet another image of a section of Hraunfossar, in Southwestern Iceland…. Read More
“The waters flowed over the rocks like dancers clad in ribbons of silk, some fluttering like gossamer curtains in a summer breeze.” – Ed Lehming I know that I have shared previous images and thoughts of this magnificent series of waterfalls. As I continue to review my images, new perspectives reveal themselves. Here’s an image of a small section of the broad and complex waterfalls, just to the right of my prior… Read More
“I am reminded that the most fertile lands are often built by the fires of volcanoes.” ― Ed Lehming On the seventh day of our Iceland journey, my son and I travelled through the high mountain passes at the base of the West Fjords, southward along Highway 60 to rejoin the Ring Road, just north of the town of Bifrost. We were greeted by this spectacular view of a broad valley, filled with… Read More
“The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way.” ― Cheryl Strayed Most of Iceland remains wild, and untamed, and that is a good thing. As humans, in this era of convenience, it’s refreshing to be in a place like this; a place where we… Read More
“It’s not about inviting great things into our lives. Rather, it’s about accepting the invitation of great things to step out of our lives.” ― Craig D. Lounsbrough For those following my Iceland journey from late October, you will know that it was made up of a series of ‘general’ destinations. We simply set up a schedule to take us from one overnight stop to the next, leaving time between those destinations to… Read More
“Some beautiful paths can’t be discovered without getting lost.” ― Erol Ozan This, our sixth day of travel, did not leave us lost, as the quote may imply, but it did send us down some ‘interesting’ paths. As I noted in previous posts, there are roads which enter Iceland’s mountainous and rugged interior known as “F” roads, which we were prohibited from driving on with our rental vehicle, despite studded tires and four-wheel… Read More
“Faeries, come take me out of this dull world, For I would ride with you upon the wind, Run on the top of the dishevelled tide, And dance upon the mountains like a flame.” ― William Butler Yeats I can’t say enough about how stunningly raw the landscape in Iceland is. Even on dull, slightly overcast days, there are these short breaks in the cloud where the world is alight with colours, and… Read More
“The greatest loss lies in our inability to accept loss.” ― Craig D. Lounsbrough I have a strange fascination with abandoned buildings, always wondering how they became abandoned and the stories they must have to tell when they were somebody’s home. Along the Ring Road we travelled through Iceland, there are many of these empty shells, some quite ancient, many perched along a lonely mountainside, lost in the vast, empty landscape which is… Read More
“When you don’t cover up the world with words and labels, a sense of the miraculous returns to your life that was lost a long time ago when humanity, instead of using thought, became possessed by thought.” ― Eckhart Tolle As I continue to review my photos from Iceland, inevitably I come across a collection of photos I have dubbed “The Golden Valley”. I posted one of them a few weeks ago. That… Read More
“Nature was pure, and still is.” ― Anthony T. Hincks On day five of our ten-day Iceland trip, we drove through what felt like a rather long stretch of nothing much, as we departed the plains and low hills of Mývatn and headed towards Akureyri, Iceland’s’ second largest city. On our map we noted the location of Goðafoss and decided this was to be an extended stop on our journey. As I found… Read More
“I took my love, I took it down Climbed a mountain and I turned around And I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills ‘Til the landslide brought me down” – Fleetwood Mac As those who follow my blog regularly will know, I try to avoid people in my photos. My primary focus is to share places and things and try to convey some of the ‘feeling’ of those places and… Read More
“Unlike the majority of people, he did not hate or fear the wilderness; as harsh as the empty lands were, they possessed a grace and a beauty that no artifice could compete with and that he found restorative.” ― Christopher Paolini It’s really hard to describe this place. The photo was made about an hour after the one I posted yesterday. That’s how fast conditions change in Iceland. For about thirty minutes, we… Read More
“How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!” ― John Muir The name Austari – Skógarmannafjöll literally means East Skogar Mountains. I’m still trying to understand the multiple iterations of Icelandic names. These ‘mountains’ are a part of the area referred to by geographers as part of the Table Mountains of Northern Iceland. The whole region is characterized by vast, flat lava fields and these mountains stand alone in this flatness. For… Read More
“I like geography best, he said, because your mountains & rivers know the secret. Pay no attention to boundaries.” ― Brian Andreas Believe it or not, this is a colour photo. The light is heavily filtered by the snow filled clouds that created a significant driving challenge as I was travelling through the highland which separate North and East Iceland. The mountains are part of a long actively volcanic ridge that runs from… Read More
“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity” ― John Muir I have found myself looking back through the photos I made along a trail leading to Sandfell, a moderately high coastal mountain, on the Fáskrúðsfjörður fjord in Eastern Iceland. I shared a bit about this in yesterday’s post. This place summed up a lot of what… Read More
“The path to our destination is not always a straight one. We go down the wrong road, we get lost, we turn back. Maybe it doesn’t matter which road we embark on. Maybe what matters is that we embark.” ― Barbara Hall During our journey along Iceland’s Ring Road, we took many occasions to satisfy our curiosity by hiking off the road when the opportunity presented itself. One of these opportunities was this… Read More
“The best part of the journey is the surprise and wonder along the way.” ― Ken Poirot One thing I never got tired of in Iceland was the waterfall and there was never a shortage of waterfalls. For those following this series of posts in my Iceland Journal Series, this will come as not surprise. In fact, it got to the point where I was bypassing some waterfalls as ‘insignificant’ since I knew there… Read More
“A horse loves freedom, and the weariest old work horse will roll on the ground or break into a lumbering gallop when he is turned loose into the open.” ― Gerald Raftery Today’s image is a bit of a break from mountains, waterfalls and fjords, though I saw plenty along the way to this location, near the town of Egilsstaðir in Eastern Iceland. Unlike my previous photos, which featured primarily the coastal region,… Read More
“Well, first of all,” said the BFG, “human beans is not really believing in giants, is they? Human beans is not thinking we exist.” ― Roald Dahl You’d think, to look on this, that giants did exist, and had built a broad staircase to the heavens. It’s quite a sight when you first see it, the broad and high steps of the steep hills along the East Fjords. For me, it was something… Read More
“It’s not the endings that will haunt you But the space where they should lie, The things that simply faded Without one final wave goodbye.” ― Erin Hanson The long journey comes to an end, silently and slowly, in water. Nothing is quick for a glacier, including its ending. The ice slowly flows down the mountains, slowly melting, cracking, and disintegrating. The last vestiges float about in a muddy pond, eventually fading not… Read More
“Ice, deep, blue and tortured ice; The vault of time, and memory, long past.” – Ed Lehming Words can barely describe the feeling of standing side by side with a glacier. Ice, formed tens of thousand of years ago. Ice, that has travelled for kilometers from high mountain peaks to slowly melt into oblivion, in a muddy glacial pool. The photo hardly does it justice; layers of ice and dust, reminders of… Read More
Ice, massive ancient glacial ice, sagging and flowing under its own weight; A great white beast, carving and devouring the mountains which contain it, creeping forward, unstoppable; It’s only foe, sunlight and warmth. I stand humbled by its patient and persistent force. – Ed Lehming Svínafelsjökull glacier, or rather, the “glacier of Svínafels”, since jökull is Icelandic for glacier is actually one of the smaller glacial outflows associated with Hvannadalshnúkur, mentioned in… Read More
“It’s when rock breaks its silence that it crumbles to dust.” ― Anthony T. Hincks Today’s image is a closer look at the massive, dark cliff visible in yesterday’s post. This cliff, Lómagnúpsnef (nef is Icelandic for nose), dominated the horizon for a long time, ever brightening with more details emerging from the shadows as we got closer to it. There are many more details that I’m aware of, now that I’m not behind… Read More
“The Road goes ever on and on Down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow, if I can, Pursuing it with eager feet, Until it joins some larger way Where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say” ― J.R.R. Tolkien This single photo can sum up my Icelandic journey. By the way, I was not driving when I made… Read More
“There was an ocean above us, held in by a thin sac that might rupture and let down a flood at any second.” ― Stephen King Mýrdalssandur is a massive outwash plain just east of the town of Vik, on Iceland’s south coast. The Ring Road enters this area after a short run along the mountains near Vik. I have never seen anything like this and at first had no idea what I… Read More
Ed Lehming Photography 
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