Iceland with a 4x5
Walking around iceland always does feel like you are in the setting that inspired so many sci fi and fantasy stories - this photo, is what communicates that for me.
I never got around to making this post, but I find myself with excess time today and in need of a distraction. So here we go. A few years ago I brought a yashica tlr to iceland, though on my first exposure the shutter stuck and I was without the tools to fix it. So I made do by taking all my photos with a DSLR instead. They came out great, I love them dearly. But I always wanted to shoot iceland on film. So a year later My wife and I planned another trip because we just wanted to get back there! This time, I took a 4x5. My 4x5 is my most reliable film camera I own, mostly because its operation is so simple, less moving parts means less things that can get messed up! The negatives we got from this trip are truly wonderful.
This image is one of my favorite frames from the trip (back in 2023). In any other image, the two silhouetted hikers in the top left would be the focus point, but here they are nothing more than a punctuation mark against the landscape. On the upper third horizon line, centered in the frame is the sun, masked behind an otherwise impervious wall of cloud. Here it works as a guiding star, drawing your eyes down the river into frame and out toward the sea. The green moss rises up the mountain side like fog rising in the air, and the river twists and tumbles on its path out to the ocean. The low, half sun reminds me of views from the moon, or another planet. It hangs in the air, low and misshaped, as if it is not the sun at all, but another celestial body orbiting the strange landscape. The way the cliffs reach outwards at odd angles, collecting never seems to make sense. There is always something that breaks the pattern, there are few clean lines here, nothing has had time to truly begin to erode. Growing up in the appalachian foothills, this is completely foreign to my eyes. Walking around iceland always does feel like you are in the setting that inspired so many sci fi and fantasy stories - this photo, is what communicates that for me.
