Late-night sunshine behind the mountains, Djupivogur
There are advantages and disadvantages to the 24 hours of daylight in Iceland at midsummer. The advantage is that you have a really long day at your disposal to explore and can fit in so much, travel around, do all the boring stuff and still have time to go and see things. It also meets as a photographer you have the sort of light for which you would sell your left kidney for so much longer. Golden hour effectively lasts from about 21:00 through to around 06:00. The disadvantage, of course, is that you just don’t want to sleep…
The shot below looks like a sunset. It was taken at about 22:30, but the sun was still a good few hours from its brief dip below the horizon. Everything was bathed in the warm amber light that you would expect from the setting sun, but this just went on and on… and on. Glorious! After bouncing along the tops of the jagged, snow-capped peaks that ran along the fjord behind Djupivogur for a while, the sun finally dipped just below, throwing the town into shadow and turning the calm water of the fjord into liquid gold. A halo of sunlight burst out from the mountain top like an explosion of light, the drama accompanied by the cacophonous cries of thousands of seabirds as they settled down for their evening feed.
Definitely worth staying up for…
June 2015
Canon EOS 70D
Canon EF 100-400 L IS II