Myvatn, Iceland - A place is full of geothermal field

We had a car trip on durt road for awhile, thanks Daniel, he is a great photographer, trip organisor, and a safe driver to take us there.  According to Daniel, this place is not marked in guidebook, so see less track of tourist which is great for photography.  However, we still need to avoid getting people in the shot if we don't want to!

Rule #1: Stay together, try not to get into others' shot (it only last for 10 mins)
Rule #2: Stay away from the hot mud pool and soft mud

These are the reminders from Daniel before we left the car.

When I first saw the place, it's full of layer of colour, like grey, red, yellow, green, blue, etc. Not only these, but also has different texture of things like steam, stone, wet mud, dry mud, etc. So in this picture, I would like to show the layer of colour that I really like!

I found the mud pool is very interesting thing, but I do worry about getting burn, so long zoom was needed. When I looked at the bubbles in the pool, and hearing the noise which sounds like boiling hot pot! I started worried about where I was standing. So I kept moving my feet light and slow.

Look at these muddy bubbles...

It looks and sound like the giant pot for witch to prepare poison in fairy story!

I also look for stones and rocks with strange shape and colour, and I found these:

a. it has yellow colour

b. it carries multiple colour which is in different layers

c. the rock in arch-shape with nice blue sky and white cloud as background

When I was hanging around of those thermal pools, they all have interesting pattern around them which formed by wet and dry mud, it picks up colour which depends on the chemicals:

We spent couple hours there and I couldn't resist taking photos, and my arms became very sore and they asked for a break. So we had our picnic there and wait for the sunset!

You know, the light keeps changing when the sun is down! Just before that, somebody spotted the light beams came through the cloud. So I grabbed my camera again!

The reflection of light shown in the little stream which give balance of light in the picture, it's leading the audiance to the sunlight!
 

The steam also picked up the light and gave nice reflection! The whole place became very romantic and moody!

Now the sun began to set! The colour was changing quickly, it gave me a breath taking moment when it came! It was hard to choose the best photo! How about this one?

Still the steam coming out of the ground is the key element in this place with the nice shape of mountain!

Before we left the place, another photographer spotted the moon, it feels so strange to me that sun just set and its light still remains in the sky, the moon is there already!

The moon light ended the day of shotting, it reminds to go to bed! What a wonderful day!

Waterfalls photos in Dettifoss & Selfoss, Iceland

 

View along the chanel between 2 waterfalls

This is a very nice waterfalls to visit, there are two of them next to each other, Selfoss is on the upper stream, and Dettifoss is on the lower stream. Both of them are very gorgeous! However, taking photo of Dettifoss from the southen side was difficult because the strong water forced a lot of spray to get your equipment wet! I walked down to have a good look of Dettifoss by steps, my coat was getting wetter and wetter, but it's worth a visit because it gave me a good sense of the power of Dettifoss. Photo taking is possible if you have right kind of gear!

Long view of Selfoss

Because the waterfalls are so wide like this, it's a bit difficult to include the whole view, so using the wide angle is a must! But the setting of the shutter speed is very important too. When the shutter speed is slow, the water will look like a mist, if it's the effect you want, then go for it!

I like both effect, I like the mist and the details of the water! So I try to make it work like this! Having the mist on the back and the water stream on the front!

Close-up view of Selfoss

  

Since I love the movement of the water, so I had an exercise on the close-up capture of the water movement!

      

Later on, I was fascinated by the misty feeling of the waterfall in a close-up look, I took many photos at the same spot, chasing different form I could see from the view finder, using the manual focus because the auto focus mode is not very reliable in this situation! Again shutter speed needs to be fast to capture the form of the mist. The most troublesome thing was cleaning the lens, it gets water drops very quickly, just like getting rain on you. Specially pointing the camera away when the wind is blowing to you! It's like "shot-and-hide", sounds like a game, right?

Water movement and spray in Dettifoss

At the upstream, where the water is slower and calm, I found some patterns which a lot of texture, mud!

They look so much like Chinese painting to me, the left hand side one with the small round stone, it's my moonlight picture. With the effect of the mud, naturally sets on the river side, the circle pattern is where the water drops landed on, etc.

When you are hanging around in these places, keeps your eye up and down, you may find things that your like! And don't mess up the view may other people like.

Make the photo work

When I arrived the site, I looked at the place and everything is so amazing to me. The first question I had in my mind was, "How to take photo?"

I'm serious, everything looks very interesting to me, when I want to take a very wide angle shot, it lose the details of the place. I want to have everything in my picture, is that possible?

I did take a lot of wide angle photos, I love the landscape, so I chose the most interesting thing to me, and I concentrated.

In this picture, I would like to highlight the steam coming out from the earth, and the three lines of sulfur crystal on the surface. It gave me a strong feeling of the place, it's the character of the place. So, if this is the forground, then I need to find the background..... Since, the weather was a bit cloudy, not much light... So I used the layer of cloud to make the picture more interesting.

Later on, I had a better look of things here and look for details, I started seeing a lot of natrual texture which is very interesting. They told me some of their story how do they form and how do they look like.


When you go down to it, you can see much smaller thing that may catch your eye, like this...