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!

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.

I tried and utterly failed to do a post-facto travelogue for my two-week trip to Beijing in August 2008, but here I am failing to learn any lessons and trying again with my recently completely two-week trip to Ecuador. As with the Beijing trip, I traveled heavy on cameras and have a ton of photos to share, and figured I might as well string them together with some prose that may or may not be interesting to friends or helpful to random Internet surfers looking to plan a trip.

The trip was split into several different phases, as follows:

• Phase 1: The Northern Amazon (Orellana and Sucumbíos provinces): working with the Frente de Defensa de la Amazonía
• Phase 2: The Middle Amazon (Napo province): interlude in Misahualli and Tena
• Phase 3: Among the Kichwa (Pastaza province): guinea pigs for a new ecotourism operation
• Phase 4: Tourists in the Northern Sierra (Pichincha province): lazy days in Quito with stops in Papallacta and Mindo
• Phase 5: The Southern Sierra (Azuay province): exploring Cuenca
• Phase 6: Cajas National Park (Azuay province): backpacking at 14,000 feet
• Phase 7: Back to Quito (Pichincha province): half-days in Cuenca and Quito before heading back to the States

I’ll try to write up each of these in turn to accompany my photos (above: one of the last photos I took on the trip - the road out of Cajas National Park). Stay tuned.

A couple largely unprocessed shots from Ecuador thus far. My photos from the oil waste pits will have to wait, but here’s just a brief update. Above, Quito at night, taken from the inside of a school bus that one of our party managed to hire as a taxi. Below, riding through the jungle in the back of a pickup truck - near the oil production station of Atacapi, in the Succumbios province near Lago Agrio.

Much more to come, just wanted to upload a couple quick ones before embarking on Part 2 of the trip (Cuenca and the southern Sierras).

As mentioned in my last post, I’ll be in Ecuador for the next two weeks. My exact plans are yet to be nailed down, but roughly speaking, for the first week I will be in the rainforest, doing some pro bono photography work with the Frente de Defensa de la Amazonía. We may follow that up with a visit to the remote Cuyabeno National Wildlife Reserve, or I also have an opportunity to do more photography work, this time with an indigenous fair-trade tea cooperative that is just starting up. For the second week, I’ll be doing some backpacking around the Cuenca area, perhaps in Cajas National Park, with a group of friends.

I last went to Ecuador for a brief visit in 2006. I didn’t even bring my D70 because I was traveling super light - one small backpack for 10 days - and didn’t want to have to be worried about carrying such an expensive piece of gear around. This time, I’m bringing my D700 with grip, D300, 14-24/2.8, 50/1.4, 90/2.8 macro, a borrowed 70-300/4.5-5.6 VR (decided the 80-200/2.8 would be too much to lug around), and an SB-800. It’s all insured so at least I have that peace of mind. I really prefer traveling light, but camera gear pretty much precludes that possibility. The bag pictured above with my gear weighs an appalling 33 pounds, 6 ounces.

Speaking of that bag, I’m violating the cardinal rule of never using unfamiliar equipment for the first time on a trip. That thing is a LowePro CompuPrimus AW backpack (pictured above with my gear stowed away in it). I wanted one pack I could travel to the rainforest with that held all my gear as well as all my laptop, clothes and other necessities. The CompuPrimus is one of the few photo packs I found that is big enough to do that. Unfortunately, it is an extremely idiosyncratic pack and I’m sure I’ll be getting used to it throughout the trip.

Also new to me is the 70-300, but I’m not really worried about that - seems like I can figure it out pretty easily, although it is the first lens I’ve ever used with VR (!).

More on this trip coming later, obviously!

I was in New Orleans earlier this month to celebrate a milestone with my now-fiancée. She has done a great deal of work in the Gulf Coast region helping rebuild from the disaster that was Hurricane Katrina. We went to the Lower Ninth Ward so I could see firsthand some of what she has been up against. It was a sobering sight, to say the least. The above photo was taken inside an abandoned home in the Lower Ninth, which apparently had not been touched at all by any of the cleanup or recovery efforts (here is another view). Keep in mind: this happened more than four years ago. It’s pretty unbelievable. I did not touch anything in the above photo; that mug was just sitting there, and I used my pop-up flash to cast a little light on it.

I am currently planning a trip to do some photography of a disaster site of a different nature: the areas of the Ecuadorian Amazon polluted by Texaco oil exploration starting around 1970. I leave Friday. Some of what I get will appear here, no doubt. In the meantime, here are the rest of my shots from New Orleans - most of them of a much happier nature than the above.

…in part, presumably, because gay marriage is legal and homosexuality seems to be more widely accepted. You certainly won’t see any military floats at pride parades in the States, but there they were at Vancouver Pride last Sunday, along with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, numerous government officials, the border patrol, and much more (above is Miss Greater Vancouver - who apparently sees things a bit differently from, say, the former Miss California). Also, where most pride parades in the States that I’ve witnessed have been heavy on the G in LGBT, the LBT part seemed to get a solid percentage of the attention at this particular parade.

I used my D700, 24-70/2.8, and a 105/2.5 AI-S manual focus lens borrowed from my brother. Ideally I would have had my 80-200/2.8, but I decided not to bring it on this trip to save weight while traveling. If I’d known I was going to have the opportunity to shoot a parade, I definitely would have stuck it in my bag. Oh well. The 105 served decently for a few shots (like the two shots above), but I’m so out of practice with using manual focus lenses in fast-action situations that I ditched it in favor of the zoom after only 20 minutes or so. If my D700 had a split prism focusing screen it would have been different, but… it doesn’t.

So, 24-70 it was, and unfortunately I wasn’t often able to get close enough to go very wide. So I have tons of shots taken at 70mm, at f/2.8 or f/4.0, trying fruitlessly to get some subject isolation. I just didn’t have enough focal length to get anything but a bunch of ugly, cluttered backgrounds. Damn. I uploaded a ton of photos to Flickr, but only because the subjects were so compelling that I think they’re fun photos, not because the photos are technically great or even anywhere close. Still, there were a few times that a parade participant got close enough to me to make things interesting:

As I mentioned in the previous post, during the tail end of the parade I was able to get onto the street and go wide. I still got massively cluttered backgrounds, but at least my compositions were better. As for the rest of my shots, here are just a few favorites, or check out the highlights set for a more concise version of the photoset linked to above.

There was an uncharacteristic heat wave in Vancouver the weekend of pride (really the week before), and lots of people - parade participants and spectators alike - were rather scantily clad.

Others, though, were seriously in costume (not that the dude above isn’t “in costume” per se!) and I can’t imagine how uncomfortably warm they must have been. There was even a guy wearing a full suit of metal armor (no joke), but I didn’t get a good photo of him.

“Public nudity is illegal” was clearly printed in the guidelines, but plenty of participants - and some spectators - apparently decided that public half-nudity isn’t covered by the law. I felt a little weird taking photos of naked people but most crowd members certainly didn’t seem to have any qualms :) One of my favorite photos has some incidental nudity - this woman was a spectator (as far as I know) but she was dressed up and totally into it, to the point that people in the parade were stopping to get photos taken with her. She hammed it up for me:

OK, that’s enough for here. Go check out the full photoset or the highlights for more.

This was my favorite float, photographically speaking, at the 2009 Vancouver pride parade. They were registered as “Fun in Recovery,” and lived up to the name: they brought the party big-time, with a truckload of dancers, two bubble machines, water guns, giant rainbow flags, and even more dancers in rotation around the truck. Better yet, as they were bringing up the rear of the parade, various crowd members (like me) were able to hop into the middle of the parade route and join the madness.

I’ll post more on shooting this event soon, but for now these are some of the photos I like just from this float. (And here’s a video that I didn’t shoot.)