Jökulsárgljúfur National Park is a long, narrow park in northeastern Iceland. It shares some superficial characteristics with Shenandoah National Park in the United States, except rather than running along the ridge of a mountain, it follows the path of the massive Jökulsá River, which flows south-to-north, starting at the massive Vatnajökull glacier in the southeastern part of the country. We hiked the park from its northern end to the southern tip, a modest trip totaling about 21 or 22 miles.

Photography-wise, this was not the best two days of the trip. It was fortunate for us as backpackers that we were presented with two brilliantly clear, sunny days, perfect weather for being outside. However, the constant sun for nearly 20 hours a day meant that basically all of my photos were taken in harsh, direct sunlight, hardly a recipe for great work. So while the scenery on this hike was pretty great, the photos are not - sorry about that. (My photos from our second hike are far, far better; we’ll get to those eventually.)

We started by hopping on a bus from Akureyri at 8:15am, which took us through the fishing village of Húsavík and then to Ásbyrgi - a bizarre geological feature at the northern end of the park. Ásbyrgi is basically an enormous horseshoe-shaped canyon, supposedly carved out in a matter of days by a massive tide of water flooding from the south after a volcanic eruption somewhere in Vatnajökull. Sheer cliffs of up to 100 meters in height were created in an otherwise featureless, flat landscape. Most day-trippers explore the canyon itself, but our hike led us up the side of the cliff to a beautiful view atop the canyon. From this vantage point I shot a fairly artless photo that I’ll post here just because it shows the scale of things (note the mass of people near the bottom of the photo):

After admiring this scenery for a while, we began the hike in earnest, heading south through a landscape that was almost completely flat, covered in low brush, grass and moss and very little other vegetation. In most of our hikes in Iceland we felt a bit like we were on the top of the world because the views were so expansive in every direction. This first day of our Jökulsárgljúfur hike was notable in that respect but not too many others, as aside from the beginning (Ásbyrgi) and end (Hljóðarklettar), the scenery was beautiful but hardly unique or mind-boggling.

But then we came to Hljóðarklettar, and we happened upon things like this:

Scale is difficult here, but this large area of the park was filled with enormous hills made up of columnar basalt formations like these: strangely geometric shapes of rather large size, resulting from the quick cooling of lava flows. I found these rather beautiful in a slightly odd way, something I could say of much of what we ended up seeing in this country. In any case, we explored Hljóðarklettar a bit but were mostly eager to make it to our first campsite, Vesturdalur, which was a developed campsite complete with running water and toilets. We paid a small fee to camp, pitched our tent in the only rainfall of the day, and fell asleep sometime during the long dusk.

The next day, our hike took us right along the edge of the cliff overlooking the Jökulsá River (see the headline shot or below). We hadn’t seen much of the river during the first day, but it became a constant companion on the second day. Weirdly, the river wasn’t so much picturesque as it was kind of disgusting - the water was an opaque milky-gray as a result of all the volcanic ash collected by the river on its way from Vatnajökull far to the south. We certainly wouldn’t be able to rely on it for drinkable water, which became an issue later in the day.

As the day wore on, the hike became more and more featureless, particularly when the trail moved away from the river into open land. We hiked for hours on one particular section in which all we could see in any direction was rock, dust, sky, and literally nothing else, with a strong wind blowing directly into our faces. When at last we came to our campsite at the southern end of the park, we were low on water and energy, and the campsite offered little comfort: shelter from the incessantly blowing wind was minimal at best, and there was no water available. The park supposedly keeps two large canisters filled for campers, but these were almost empty when we arrived, with barely half a liter of water left:

There was no water source nearby that we could tell, and with only about a liter of water left for the night and the next morning, we began contemplating double-filtering and then purifying the filthy water from the Jökulsá. We pitched our tent and I went in search of water; luckily, on the trail to Dettifoss, the waterfall at the southern tip of the park, I discovered what appeared to be a rainwater pond - literally the only fresh water we’d seen in the previous 5-6 hours of hiking. The pond, though it was standing water, looked clear enough, and with our water problem solved we were finally able to relax and go check out Dettifoss…

…which was, in a word, awesome. The largest waterfall in Europe by volume, Dettifoss let off an incomprehensible roar of sound, kicked up spray that was visible a mile away, and generally dwarfed the senses when approached. We stood in awe for some time and I tried to figure out some way to capture it on camera that would do some justice to simply standing in the presence of that kind of natural power. I failed, of course, but hopefully the above photo and the others the gallery give some idea. This was far from the prettiest waterfall we saw on our trip, but it was definitely the most impressive.

And then we settled in for a miserable night’s sleep: miserable because our tent was pitched on volcanic ash that blew into the tent all night, giving our respiratory systems fits. Luckily, the next day we were just catching a bus to a nearby town, Mývatn, and so could afford a terrible night of little rest. Mývatn ended up being one of our favorite places in Iceland, and the subject of the next entry.

In the meantime, check out more photos at the updated Flickr set!

I interrupt the Iceland coverage to bring you my first concert shoot in almost two months… my first concert shoot in Minneapolis… my first concert shoot in a long time without the backing of a publication… which was metal cello group Apocalyptica and Japanese black metallers Dir En Grey at First Avenue. This is sort of like Minneapolis’ version of the 9:30 Club; it’s the biggest club-sized venue in town, as far as I can tell, and this bill didn’t come anywhere close to filling it up, but a respectable and enthusiastic crowd showed up and the bands put on a good show.

Having seen other photogs’ shots of Apocalyptica, I knew I was in for a treat, and they didn’t disappoint. A bunch of metal dudes headbanging over their cellos isn’t something you see every day, and while the lighting left a bit to be desired (I could have used some white light somewhere along the way, but it wasn’t to be), the drama was pretty much there on a platter. Metal bands in general tend to offer loads of opportunities for fun shots, but these guys brought up a notch.

Dir En Grey are a band I’ve heard a lot about (mostly since they signed to The End Records) but have never bothered to check out. This show will change that, as I came away awfully impressed by them: great stage presence, some seriously catchy riffs, and a pretty astounding vocalist. Of course, being an opening band in a metal show, their lighting was mostly abysmal for photography, but what else is new?

That said, later in the set when I was shooting from afar, I was able to catch some neat rimlight effects on vocalist Kyo:

The instant I walked into First Avenue - my first time in any music venue in the Twin Cities, having moved here just about a week and a half ago - I knew I was going to miss the 9:30 Club. Not that First Avenue isn’t a nice venue - my impressions were quite positive - but the 9:30 Club has an amazingly low stage for a venue its size, and I kind of took that for granted. First Avenue’s stage is probably about five feet high, which presented me with all the usual problems a high stage always comes with. I look forward to exploring the smaller venues in the area, although I suspect I’ll be at First Avenue quite a bit.

More photos from a show, including a few fan shots, are here at Flickr.

This will be a bit of a short one, as we only spent a single afternoon in Akureyri, the “capital of the north” (check out this map for some geography help). Akureyri is an eclectic mix of things including a quaint, pedestrian-friendly downtown; a huge mall surrounded by a big parking lot and wide streets; and some outskirts that seem to consist in large part of weirdly pre-fab looking cookie-cutter housing. As we only had an afternoon (we arrived in the early afternoon and left early the next morning for Jökulsárgljúfur National Park), we spent most of our time in the pedestrian-friendly downtownish area, aside from a trip to the mall to buy some stove fuel for our upcoming backpacking trips.

Akureyri, like Reykjavik, has an imposing church overlooking the center of town, although this one has nothing on Hallgrímskirkja. Those steps lead straight down to the downtown area and the pedestrian-friendly Hafnarstræti, with a huge number of restaurants and cafes, of which our favorite by far was a tiny Indian Curry Hut staffed by a single very dark-skinned Indian man and a very blond, tall, and slightly clumsy Icelandic woman. The entire restaurant, kitchen aside, included a counter for taking orders, two barstools in front of a shelf that served as a table, and room to stand for perhaps two people. And it was tasty!

The one sightseeing activity we indulged in was a trip to the Akureyri Botanical Gardens, which happened to be right behind our hotel. This was a pretty awesome botanical garden, featuring all kinds of flora neither of us had ever seen before. I came armed with a macro lens and got a few shots I like:

Aside from going to the botanical gardens, eating, and running a few errands for the backpacking trips, we pretty much relaxed in the same way we did in Reykjavik, by sitting in cafes and watching people. Most of the activities in the Akureyri area seemed to require a full day, and as we only had part of an afternoon, there wasn’t a whole lot we could do other than wander around. So that’s what we did.

Finally, after nightfall - which of course wasn’t until 11pm or so - we retired back to our hotel, which was really more of an expensive hostel, and prepared for the next morning, when we would hop on a bus to Jökulsárgljúfur. Backpacking photos coming next!

Mary and I kicked off our two-week Iceland honeymoon with three days in Reykjavik, giving us a chance to have a relatively relaxed start to our vacation before we started traipsing all across the country. Reykjavik is a very modern, very European, very fashionable, very expensive, very safe, and very small city. It’s also very photogenic, although I quickly realized that a severe downside to summer days with 20 hours of sun is that, well, that’s a whole lot of direct sunlight and not too many opportunities for good outdoor light except on cloudy days.

We did a number of the classic touristy things that one does while in Iceland’s capital city; visiting the immense, imposing Hallgrímskirkja church was one of the first, although it wasn’t until the second time we went that I got the above headline shot (the light was just terrible the first time). We also spent quite some time hanging out in cafes - Reykjavik is well-known for an abundance of coffee shops, most of which serve excellent coffee and have a lot of character. Our favorites were Cafe Hljómskálinn, a two-story octagonal building right on Lake Tjörnin downtown, and Babalú, a ridiculously cute and friendly cafe just down the street from Hallgrímskirkja. We spent some time there browsing the Reykjavik Grapevine, the local alt-weekly English-language paper that turned out to be absolutely hilarious:

Probably the most touristy thing we did was spend an afternoon at the Blue Lagoon, the most famous of the country’s countless hot springs, which has become developed into a massive tourist attraction thanks to its location halfway between Reykjavik and the international airport at Keflavik. Just outside the main hot springs, one can wander around the creepily opaque-white water and peer at the geothermal power plant in the distance:

Inside the facility, it looked more like this…

Our hotel was about a 20-minute walk from downtown, walkable either through the main downtown drag or along the waterfront. We walked back along the water one evening and were treated with dramatic dark skies while the sun was still fully out: a really neat combination that tends to happen in mid-Atlantic North America only right before or after big thunderstorms. It turned out to be a pretty common occurrence in Iceland, which both of us thought was rather awesome.

The morning of our final day in Reykjavik, before we boarded a noonish flight to Akureyri (Iceland’s second largest city at a whopping 17,000 people), I wandered down to the harbor in the hopes of catching a few photos of the harbor at work. I underestimated the time it took to get there, though, and ended up just shooting some photos at what seemed to be a near-abandoned pier. Although it wasn’t what I set out to do, I ended up with some shots I’m very happy with, like this macro of a rope tied to the pier:

And this semi-closeup of a building under construction on the waterfront, east of the harbor:

Walking back from the harbor, I stumbled across the city’s main Catholic church, which while not nearly as visually striking as Hallgrímskirkja, definitely had something of its own charm, especially in the crisp morning air with no one around. I spent some time walking around the church and looking for different angles; I’m happiest with this shot, using one of the statues in the front lawn as a foreground subject.

And then later that morning it was off to Akureyri - and the beginning of our trip around the far less-traveled parts of Iceland, including a couple of multi-day backpacking trips through some astounding scenery. Photos to come, of course! In the meantime, check out all my posted photos of our first three days in Reykjavik, over at Flickr.

(Also: the people of Reykjavik made for fantastic photo subjects, but I didn’t really get around to taking a ton of people pictures until we returned to the city for the last couple days of our trip. So those are coming later.)

Why no posts for so long?  I’ve been traveling in Iceland for two weeks for my honeymoon, and am writing this from a cafe in Reykjavík.  Unfortunately, I idiotically left my camera cable at home and have no way of processing or uploading the 32+ gigabytes of photos I’ve taken so far.  We’ve had a fantastic trip so far, which has included several days here in Reykjavík, a few days exploring other towns like Akureyri and Lake Mývatn, and two long backpacking trips, one through Jökulsárgljúfur National Park and the other on the Laugavegurinn, a trail that our guidebook calls “one of the world’s great hikes,” an assessment which may only be a minor exaggeration.

Things we’ve seen so far: tons of beautiful landscapes, lots of eerily bubbling hot springs and steam vents, wacky local fashions (wildly patterned tights are a big thing here), lots of blonde people, crazy buses capable of fording large glacial rivers, some very interesting foods, the most delicious butter we’ve ever had, endless sheep, cows and horses, plenty of European tourists, very few Americans, a man we took to calling Beowulf, and more. Of course, there will be photos to come (I’ve tried not to let my photography totally dominate our honeymoon, but it’s up to my wife to decide whether or not I actually succeeded).  Sorry for the hiatus and the photo-less post, hopefully it’ll be worth it.

The above photo of labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein appeared in the July 1 issue of the Chicago Reader, in an article about Wal-Mart. I shot this photo at a panel event at Georgetown University, in which I intentionally framed the majority of my photos extremely tightly to add some drama to the generally dry activity of people talking from podiums.

I’ve wanted to shoot in Baltimore’s Carroll Park for some time now. This park is in southern Baltimore and features an abandoned train, a burned-out bathhouse, a colonial mansion, and lots of gnarled trees. There’s literally too much awesome stuff there to use in a single shoot. Maryland Deathfest provided me not only with some great music and great music photos, it also provided me with a model willing to shoot in Carroll Park.

We went through a few looks, from the soft, natural-light styling shown in the headline photo to the two shots below, where Cara put her death-metal wardrobe to use and I put a couple of those gnarly trees to use. These were shot with a single SB-800 on or near full power, with no modifiers. I was at ISO LO 1.0 and a high shutter speed to underexpose the ambient as much as possible - in particular, I wanted some nice contrast in the clouds (we lucked out with a cloudy day; a sunny day would have made these photos way less interesting). The first shot is taken at 14mm, and even that wasn’t wide enough to capture the whole scene. I went a little tighter for the second shot, which is taken at 24mm.

And one last shot. This photo was something of a happy accident. I don’t actually think it’s that great of a photo, but in my post-processing I managed to make it pop like no other portrait I’ve ever done. At the root of it is an aggressive, high-contrast black & white conversion. Making Cara’s skin almost white isn’t something I’d do with most people, but it works for her, and her black hair and shirt are perfect contrasts. After the black & white conversion was some funky selective sharpening and local contrast adjustments that make the hair and eyes in particular seem to jump out of the frame. I only wish the original photo was a bit better!

There are a few more of these in this set over at Flickr.

Music Festival #3 in my non-chronological recap series was Bamboozle Roadshow at Merriweather Post Pavilion. I was interested in precisely zero of the bands here, but I thought it would be a fun event to shoot, again because of both the bands and the fans. This fest caters to the high school crowd, with a slew of pop-punk and powerpop bands, maybe like a slightly less grungy Warped Tour. Two stages; at the main stage we got two songs in the pit per band, at the secondary stage we got the usual three. As the day wore on the pit became insanely packed, mostly with photographers in their teens, likely shooting for blogs and personal websites.

Some photographers take issue with this - particularly at something like Warped Tour where you have a bunch of kids with point-and-shoots in the photo pit - but while I find it annoying not to be able to move around in the pit, I also appreciate that these sorts of festivals are really giving a leg up to young photographers looking to get into music photography. My version of living this dream went down a different path - shooting underground bands at tiny, dark clubs with no pit and no photo policy - but I’m excited for these new photogs who are getting to shoot bands they love in a photo pit in front of thousands of fans. Pretty cool.

Of the bands, my favorites to shoot were Cartel (pictured in the headline shot) and Forever the Sickest Kids. By the time the last few bands rolled around, I’d gotten a bit tired of the crowded pit and of shooting bands I had no real interest in, so I started spending most of my time in the pit turned away from the stage and taking photos of fans at the barricade. Good times.

Here’s The Downtown Fiction closing their set at the second stage:

The aforementioned Forever the Sickest Kids, for whom the 14-24/2.8 was a perfect tool:

Boys Like Girls (you can tell what kind of bands these are just from their names):

The classic crowdsurfing shot… this is some ISO 6400 magic here:

While the kids rocked out, here’s what many of their parents did…

A quiet moment:

And finally, one more not-so-quiet fan moment.

As always, tons more photos like these are over at Flickr.

If you follow me on Twitter (and you should!), you know that I just got myself a copy of Adobe Creative Suite 5 - including Photoshop, of course, but also Illustrator, InDesign and Acrobat 9 - thanks to my newfound ability to take advantage of crazy academic discounts on software.

Above is one of my favorite crowd shots from Bamboozle Roadshow, which I’ll be posting about soon. Unfortunately, it was 2-3 stops underexposed because the stage lights went out just as I was taking the photo. The version you see above is what I managed to salvage using Adobe Camera Raw 6.1, Photoshop CS5 and the latest 64-bit version of Noise Ninja. If you hover your mouse over the image and wait for a second (sorry, the files are large), you’ll see the earlier version I originally posted, processed using Nikon Capture NX2, Photoshop 7.0 and an older version of Noise Ninja.

I’m not actually sure which version I like better. With Camera Raw, I was better able to salvage the shadows while still keeping the noise at acceptable levels. I screwed up the custom white balance a bit though; I like the cooler tones of the original image better than the orangey tones of the new one. That said, the original image feels like an underexposed image to me, which bothers me; the new one feels a lot less so. It’s all personal preference of course, but I’m pretty happy to have a new tool at my disposal. When processing images that have been properly exposed and need minimal post-processing work, it might not matter much. But when trying to salvage images that I screwed up in-camera, or when I want to use artistic effects for portraits, wedding shots, etc, my options just expanded enormously.

(Also: let’s take a moment to marvel at how an ISO 3200 image can be brought up nearly 3 stops in post - boosting effective ISO to 256000 - and still be usable at all.)

Maryland Deathfest was one of several large festival-style music events I’ve photographed in the last month and a half or so. I’m late on posting about the others but I’m going to go ahead and do it, as I’m very happy with some of the shots I got from these. Shooting at festivals is always fun not just because of the variety of bands, but also because I really enjoy taking pictures of festival-goers, who (especially at something like MDF) often make for really, really interesting people-watching.

In late April I took a gazillion photos at the Earth Day Climate Rally that took place on DC’s National Mall. This full-day event was a weird cross between a political rally and a music festival, with a massive array of speakers interspersed between brief sets of music (3-5 songs per artist). Of the speakers, I particularly enjoyed Jesse Jackson Sr. and Rep. Ed Markey, and was bummed to have gotten there too late to hear what new AFL-CIO president Rich Trumka had to say.

There was a rudimentary media tent set up - just a couple tables and chairs, no food or drink or anything like that - where various VIPs came and did interviews and photo ops. I found these photo ops bizarre and awkward. Though I’ve never shot a red carpet event, I suppose this was similar - random VIP arrives, poses for dozens of photographers in front of a cheesy pre-fab background, continues on his/her merry way. So strange. I actually preferred to wait and take photos while the VIPs were doing their interviews instead of awkwardly posing. Here’s TV personality Maria Menounos:

Taking photos of people speaking at podiums is not a recipe for stunning art. That said, here’s my favorite such photo of the day, of the aforementioned Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.):

Oh, and there was music to be photographed, of course! This actually turned out to be a bit of a challenge. There was a nice, ample photo pit, but we were only allowed in there for two songs per performance. This wouldn’t have been a big deal, except the way the performances were structured, new performers would come out with every song. So for instance, three songs into a set, someone like Bob Weir or Joss Stone would wander onto the stage and play a song or two. So for probably about half of the big names on the performance roster, the photogs never actually got a proper chance to shoot.

The presence of a large media platform set back maybe 100 feet from the stage and raised up high was a mitigating factor. With a 300mm lens on a crop body I got some OK shots of performers I wasn’t able to shoot from the pit. But I realized that I had a better chance to get good stuff outside the pit by simply shooting from ground level in the crowd with the 300mm. A clumsy proposition at best, but the Joss Stone photo below (for example) was taken that way, and I’m perfectly happy with that shot.

So anyway, here are some pictures. First up, salsa legend Willie Colón:

Indie-rockers Passion Pit:

The Roots (who played their own set in the middle of the day and then performed as the backing band for every single performer after them):

Joss Stone:

Robert Randolph; this is another shoot-from-the-crowd shot:

And finally, Mr. Headliner Man, Sting:

I also spent some time sniping away at rally attendees using a long lens. There were a bunch of people with N’avi facepaint, and there was this strong Avatar vibe running through the whole event, thanks to the presence of the film’s director, James Cameron. I have to say, I find this Avatar fanboyism pretty inexplicable. I finally saw the film a few weeks ago and thought it was terrible. But I digress!

And finally, a view of part of the crowd, looking back from the media platform. There were a lot of people there.

Check out my full photoset here!