“Kirkjufellsfoss Epic Sunset”
West Iceland
Explore Iceland’s Midnight Sun
http://bit.ly/JuneIcelandWorkshop
There is a reason that Iceland is currently one of the largest hotspots for landscape photographers around the world. Between the dramatic weather, almost alien scenery and soft light, it is no wonder I return year after year. This photo was taken the week following one of the photography workshops I lead in Iceland, as I was traveling with my good friends Joe Azure and Michael Bonocore. We spent 14 days sleeping in tents and chasing the light around the country, causing us to occasionally drive for 10 hours a day as we diligently watched the in-depth weather reports.
This waterfall can be found in West Iceland and it is certainly a highlight for many photographers visiting the country. When we showed up and set up, along with another small group of photographers, a private 1 on 1 workshop (lead by a US photographer that I know), got out of their car and blatantly moved into everyone’s frame because of the sad “I was here first mentality”. It is unfortunate that there are selfish photographers out there that only value their own shot, rather than take into account others around them. Needless to say, they were cloned out of this photo, but only after I confronted him about his actions post trip. Lets just say that I am not surprised that I haven’t heard back from this supposed “professional photographer”
Camera Details:
Camera: Canon 1Dx
Lens: Nikon 14-24 f/2.8 w/ novoflex adapter
ISO: 200
Exposure: f/11 at various shutter speeds
Photo Editing Details:
In order to create this image, I had to use a variety of techniques, starting with blending 5 images into a simple 32bit tif file to dramatically increase the dynamic range of the photo using HDR Soft’s 32bit Adobe Lightroom plugin. After adjusting the the exposure, shadow, highlight settings plus the white and black point, I sent the image into Adobe Photoshop and began to clean up any dust spots and distracting elements of the image. Then it went into both onOne Software’s Perfect Effects 8 to help balance out the color and add a touch of texture depth to the image using their presets. Lastly I removed some of the blue casts from the waterfall and painted in a touch of vibrance into the color reflection in the water coming from the sunset above.
To see more of my favorite images of 2013:
http://bit.ly/2013YearinReflection