Rauðfossar, Central Iceland
I love to make up stories, whether it’s verbally, or visually.
Tonight I’ve just got my 8-rolls of film back from my little jaunt around the central highlands of Iceland over the past two weeks.
There’s not much in the rolls of film I came home with. I didn’t expect there to be, because I don’t think I was operating on full-cylinders for the first week and a half. Partly due to tiredness from all the traveling I’ve been doing, and also because the weather (Iceland had been having a terrific summer up until I arrived), was pretty miserable and lacking colour most days.
Until that is, I visited Rauðfossar waterfall in the Rauðfossafjöll range (central highlands). It came at the very end of my trip, and talking to a friend of mine about the experiences, she said to me ‘it seems you enjoyed your last week in iceland, and I’m sure you’ll look back on it fondly’. Well, I guess that’s very true, as I’m particularly happy with these three images (or stories as I like to think of them, because I feel they illustrate some aspects of Rauðfossar’s character – the waterfall is very difficult to photograph in its entirety, as it’s so large and looks like a rather messy spiders web from afar).
But up close, the waterfall is a wonder. There was even a tiny glacier in the river bed (the remnant of last winter, that still hadn’t melted away). And although it is called Red falls, it actually has a lot of orange stone in it (the image on the far right has not been messed about with to make that foreground rock look as orange as it is, that’s really mostly how it looked + velvia saturation).
This has been a place I’ve been trying to get to for the past eight years. I’m surprised that it is not on some central highland-tour stop. None of the buses stop here, there isn’t a campsite at the base of the falls (I have an epic tale to tell of how I managed to get here), and it’s not even featured on most of the postcards you see in Iceland. In short, unless you’re really into studying Iceland a bit more than the average tourist, you’ll probably not know anything about this beautiful place.
Now, in terms of my little epic tale – of how I got here. I’m embarrassed to say that I had to ford three rivers to get here, and maybe walk around eight miles in total. Most of the wardens in Landmannalaugar don’t know of it’s existence, and it was only by spying a map in a little cafe that I saw the words ‘raudafoss’ and said – oh – where is that? There seems to be a campsite near by’, and before I knew it, I was packing my my tent and heading for a bus that would drop me off at the particular campsite. I still had no idea if I was going to get to this waterfall, but I felt that if I got to the campsite ‘near’ it, I might get a better informed opinion from the warden there to how it might be possible to get to the waterfall – which is exactly what happened. I was informed upon arrival at the new campsite that the waterfall was ‘just around that bend, maybe 8km away, easy to get to (yeah, right!), and maybe a little stream to cross (yeah, right – ha ha ha).
I made it to the waterfalls around 9pm after crossing three rivers, some large expanses of moss and not another person to be seen for miles. I also add that on my return just after midnight, I had to cross the same river (almost waist-level in places) without my trousers on and boots held high in the air (as well as camera bag), and me cursing myself for being so daft to get myself into this situation (the amount of times I get myself into stupid situations for the love of a landscape photograph).
I got back to my tent near 1am, dirty – the river was full of black sand and silt. But happy, because I knew that I’d finally made it to the waterfall I’ve been so wanting to visit for years.
Madness, but then again, isn’t that what all landscape photographers are?
In terms of compositional information.I seemed to be attracted to rocks that had a degree of separation from their surroundings. Either in space (solitary rocks), or more often in terms of tonality. Playing in a landscape like this almost felt like I’d been let loose in a sweetie-shop (candy store). It felt like it was easy pickings to go find a rock that stood out – some were yellow-gold, and others were bright orange. It would be a great place to teach people about composition from the point of view of using colour and space for separation.
(ps, if you click on the image – you’ll see a nice big jpeg of the three images of the waterfall).
Hi Bruce – Wonderful, absolutely wonderful images.
Like you, I have some wild stories about how difficult it was to get to a particular spot, but none quite this wild.
I am not averse to fording streams, even if it has to be 3 of them. I can live with the muck too. So if, on your next Iceland workshop you take the group to the same spot, I will absolutely attend that workshop!
Sounds like you had a great time that last week. ….Steve
Comment by Steve N — 2 August, 2012 @ 11:43 pm
Many thanks Steve,
This waterfall is very hard to get to – unless it’s summer. The central highlands becomes almost impossible to get into for about 9 months of the year. So I don’t see this being on any workshop any time soon, unless I decided to hook up with Daniel Bergmann (Iceland’s landscape photographer).
But so nice to hear you’re as mad as I am. If there’s enough of us, then there’s less of an argument to say we’re mad. So I’d love to hear stories from others?! and also yourself if you felt it was appropriate for this blog entry.
Comment by Bruce Percy — 2 August, 2012 @ 11:47 pm
A great story, and lovely images!
Surely “madness” would be *not* wanting to capture something like this?! ;)
Comment by Michael Marten — 3 August, 2012 @ 7:10 am
Hi again Bruce – My comments about a workshop were written half in jest as I can see this sort of a hike is not generally one for a workshop. But note I wrote my comment just “half” in jest. As to the other half ………
OK, I will enlighten you as to me two difficulties. Neither of them have anywhere near the difficulties of yours. But both involve water and waterfalls. In the first, I was hiking in Oregon USA, an area where waterfalls are a plenty. I came across Punch Bowl Falls ( http://tinyurl.com/bsq5qkt ) in mid-March, perhaps a few days or so after the ice on the river flowing over the falls had melted. Because of the flow, the water was still perhaps a degree or two below freezing but fully flowing. Standing on the bank I saw the image I wanted and I had to get it. But that required being in the middle of the river. So I waded right into the icy and fast-flowing water with my camera and tripod, carrying an extra lens and some grads in my pockets. Balancing ever so carefully so as not to slip, I made my way to mid-stream where I proceeded to position and re-position myself until I was happy with the framing of the image. I must have been in the water 45 minutes or more but I was so focused on the image I was making that I barely noticed the cold until I came out. And when I emerged I sure was cold, my jeans heavy and my boots soaked well into the next day. But I had an image that to this day is one of my favourites.
The second difficulty took place on the east coast, in Nova Scotia where I hike most years in the autumn. In order to make this image ( http://tinyurl.com/d56mrnh ) I had to scale 40 feet up an almost vertical cliff and rest on a tiny perch where I was able to wedge myself and my gear into a crevice. So far so good and I made the photograph and a few others. By the time I was ready to get out of that location, it was getting dark and I could not find a way down the exceedingly slippery cliff wall. So I decided to go up to the top (about another 40 or 50 feet up but it seemed like another 250 feet up). It was the only way to go from where I was, or so it seemed. I am not a climber, I do not like heights, and the strength of my right knee is not what it used to be. The climb, straight up, was not pleasant and at some point, there was no way to go further. I was stuck and it was getting quite dark. I had no flashlight (torch for you UK folk). I was hauling my big heavy backpack with lots of gear, and a tripod. I was starting to get nervous as I realized I may have to stay there all night. No more secure foot or hand holds going up and I was probably about 60 or so feet from the waves-crashing-on-the-rocks below. I could not go down as there was no way to see where I was going and guess what? Hard Vibram soles on hiking boots are not a good thing to have on your feet in this circumstance. Very slippery indeed. When all seemed to be hopeless my gazelle-footed friend (with soft rubber light-weight shoes on I will add) came to the rescue. He hopped along the rocks, scampered up the cliff and took all my gear from me. Then he helped me find the hand and footholds that I could not see below me and I was able to get off the cliff. This was not a good situation but I made it. Too bad the resultant image is not one of my favourites.
So that is my excitement. Would be nice to hear stories from others.
Comment by Steve N — 3 August, 2012 @ 12:28 pm
Hi Michael,
Thanks for the support. I’ve not created any new images in a while (ok, I have a massive box full of Bolivia and Patagonia and Easter Island images below my desk – waiting for me to get some time to work on them), so it was a real pleasure to get a small number of rolls of film back, and work on these.
Comment by Bruce Percy — 3 August, 2012 @ 8:22 pm
Hi Steve,
Thanks so much for sharing your stories, and also for providing the links. Your comments got ‘caught’ in my spam detector because of the links I think, hence why it was so late in being approved and shown on my blog.
There are some lovely shots on that website of yours :-)
I also think it’s interesting how often, as photographers, we want to be either standing off a cliff edge, or in the water to get the view. We can ‘visualise’ what we want, and assume that by being somewhere we can’t get to – it will materialise. And in the examples you discuss here – it’s apparent that your visualisations were taking you in the right direction.
I’ve said for a while now, that if someone can invent a levitation device – one that allows us to walk on water, and also an omnipresence device – one that allows us to be at many locations all at the same time, then I’ll be the first in line for such a device (but it does make me sound like I have some wish to be a god of some kind).
Comment by Bruce Percy — 3 August, 2012 @ 8:26 pm
Congrats on the beautiful shots; they are definitely worth cold feet in my opinion! I’ve been noticing that you’ve no square images on your blog recently – have you given up your hasselblads?
Comment by NathanE — 4 August, 2012 @ 9:38 am
Hi Nathan,
When I went to Iceland, there’s only so much kit I can carry – esp in a backpack. The Hasselblad is quite a heavy and bulky system compared to the Mamiya, so it stayed at home. I think it watched a lot of telly, drank lots of tea and rested for a bit. It’s now in the Hasselblad-Hospital getting a check up, because I’ve never, ever in my life, had such temperamental equipment. Admittedly, it’s very old – over 20 years old, and I doubt it’s ever had a service, so I think it’s been needing some care and attention. The film backs keep slipping frames (not winding on fully), the bodies keep jamming up and I have to take a screwdriver to them to get the working again – except the 503 is truly broken now and is totally jammed.
I’ve heard a lot of stories about hasselblad stuff being very poor in terms of reliability. It goes against what the popular belief is. I also think the system is incredibly ‘odd’.
Having said all this, I’m finding I do make different images with it. I’m not entirely sure that square works for everything – but it’s certainly a format I wish to keep working at : )
Comment by Bruce Percy — 4 August, 2012 @ 10:03 am