Ice beach delight

Ice holidays

This lone piece of ice doesn’t represent the whole truth of the time and place. This photo was taken on the Ice Beach at Jökulsarlon during our October Winter photo workshop. In truth, the beach was very crowded with hundreds of miniature icebergs that had washed up on the black sand. It was a challenge to isolate a single piece of ice, but I managed to get close to this one as it got a soaking from the ocean waves. Our day photo workshops allow for, at least 2 opportunities to catch the sunrise on the diamond ice beach. Our guests also enjoy the chance to really explore the glacier lagoon including the chance to photograph the Northern lights there. Our hotel is located just 15 min drive from Jökulsarlon lagoon and ice beach. We try to achieve 2-3 sunrises a whole afternoon and a sunset during our 5 day photo trip.

Long exposure

This ice beach photograph was exposed for 2.5 seconds using a 6 stop Neutral Density (ND) filter and the Magic Cloth Technique. two and a half seconds is very short for a Magic Cloth exposure and I wouldn’t recommend any shorter shutter speed than this. The sky had to be covered within a half second, just a little bit longer than my reflex. As soon as I heard the shutter, there was a tiny pause before dropping the cloth. The sea would have had about 2 seconds exposure. This was enough to create plenty of blur, but allowing some nice water textures.

Video Footage

Below is a clip that I recorded with my phone. This shows how busy the beach was.