There are very few places in the country that affect you so much that you involuntarily start staring at them. Most often these are mountains. There are probably two places here in the North Iceland that attract me like this. It is "The Queen of mountains",, Herðubreið and then Þverbrekkuhnjúkur and Hraundrangi in Öxnadalur(Hraundrangi is certainly also elegant at the other side, in Hörgárdalur)
Dad and I once walked up Herðubreið. It was amazing! My admiration for the mountain did not diminish. But I have not yet climbed Þverbrekkuhnjúkur and will never climb Hraundrangi :)
This autumn I reduced my workload, went down to a 70% position as a organist at Akureyri Church. The reason was that I wanted to play more concerts and create opportunities to shoot more photos and videos. Wednesdays have been photo days for me for the past few weeks. Wednesday 21 October was photo day. My friend Daníel Starrason, a local photographer, has often joined me on these weekly trips. Great to have good photo companions.
Visit Daniels pages:
We met in the morning but somehow I did not see motives in anything. Daníel then had to go to back town and I told him that I was only going to take a short drive into Hörgárdalur. But I went further to Öxnadalur, went to the farm Hraun, then only intended to walk for a few minutes up to the hills beneath Hraundrangi, but ended climbing with all my stuff up on the top hills below Hraundrangi. It was a glorious day and up there I found the spark I missed earlier that day.
I have mostly photographed birds and that is my forte. But the landscape photography fascinates me more and more and I like to experiment with it. I decided to take a couple of lenses up there, because I had already decided to take HDR pictures, but that means I take some pictures that range from being considerably underexposed to being considerably overexposed. I mix them so that I can achieve both white snow and dark shadows as the bare eye can see. I had also decided to create Panoramas, where I take many pictures with a zoom lens and then stitch them together with software. This creates an image with very high resolution and no distortion, but wide-angle lenses distort images considerably.
It's hard to describe what it feels like to be in the freshly fallen snow, alone in this silence that is so wonderful, with all this beauty in front of you. It is very important to me not just to take pictures, but to sit down and enjoy. I like to put emotions in touch with some music. I think these moments are for me like the piece "Húm" by Atli Örvarsson. Clear, quiet, not too much of anything, three sounds, like three main themes in the landscape. The top voice of the piece is like Hraundrangi. The music is a little bit melancholic, as I always feel at times like this. A feeling I can not explain further, but is extremely strong. So happy but yet a little melancholic.
When I was on my way down, I texted Daniel, telling him I had gone up there. I got a message from him. The mountains had clearly attracted him too, because he was on his way up. His wonderful picture from Lake Hraunsvatn is here: