Ice

Glacial Hideaway

Entrance to Crystal Ice-Cave Vatnajökull, Iceland I visited Iceland in the summer and it didn’t take long to fall in love with the island. Unfortunately 2 things were missing that would have made the trip even better: Ice-Caves and Aurora. I had to go back in the winter and go back I did! Willie, Alan, Rebecca and I spent 10 days exploring Iceland at the end of February and we quickly checked off our 2 bucket-list items. A chance run-in with Colby Brown, Joe Azure, and Brian Matiash highlighted our first day in the glacial ice-caves. A day later, Oskar from Ice Guides threw us into his massive Super Jeep and off we went to Crystal Cave. Crystal “Cave” was a network of 3 sections of carved out glacier that creates cavernous tunnels for us to explore. Prepped with helmets, flashlights and our cameras we had almost 2 hours to explore this cave, part of the Svinafellsjokull glacier in Vatnajokull National Park. I loved the way the ice curled around and pointed out, away from the entrance, towards the waiting moon. A recent snow storm built a snow-arch, which would fall shortly after our visit. Bucket-list item complete! Later that night we would check off another item: northern lights (photo coming soon!). Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8: 24mm, f/11, 1/50 sec, ISO 320

Witches Freezer

Sunrise over a frozen Kirkjufell Mountain Grundarfjörður, Iceland When I visited Iceland in the Summer of 2014 I tried to cram the entire island into a 12 day trip. So when Alan, Rebecca, Willie and I spent 10 days in Iceland in the winter we tried to simplify and keep our locations to some key places. We spent the majority of the trip in the southeast portion of the country, exploring glacial ice-caves and watching the northern lights over amazing peaks. A bucket-list item would have been the aurora over Kirkjufell so we left the southeast, spent a night in the Golden Circle, and then departed for the western part of the island. We knew a storm was coming in and hoped that we could get most of the way to Kirkjufell Mountain before it arrived. That didn’t quite work out ... as we found ourselves in the middle of a massive hurricane-force blizzard. The only way we stayed on the road was by finding the giant yellow sticks carefully placed along the road by the wonderful Icelandic Department of Transportation. Willie and Alan, in the car behind us, often lost site of our vehicle, despite only being a car lengths behind. The winds and weather became so horrible that we stopped in a small town to take shelter. Alan, who had recently lost his 6-pack abs, wasn’t strong enough to hold the door to their vehicle, and found the wind nearly ripped it off its socket, damaging the door and eventually requiring replacement. After much (and I mean MUCH) debate, we finally decide to leave the shelter and risk the drive to Kirkjufell. Turns out it wasn’t so bad of a drive! Arriving at Kirkjufell was quite wet and we spent the night listening to the rain and wind pound on our little camper vans. When we woke up, though, the clouds began to clear and we hoped they would catch a little color. While exploring the tidal pools I came across this little section of broken ice and thought it made for a perfect lead-in towards Kirkjufell. What do you think - does the cracked ice provide enough of an interest point in this photo? Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8: 14mm, f/11, 1/25 sec, ISO 100

Yo, Cool Beach!

Stormy Night at the Ice Beach Jökulsárlón, Iceland Without a doubt my favorite part of our 2 weeks in Iceland was the “ice-beach”. Over at Jökulsárlón (pronounced Yo-cool-sar-lon) the lake is created as the Vatnajökull glacier melts. Ice-bergs float along the lagoon before passing through a channel into the Atlantic Ocean. The waves break down the icebergs into smaller chunks and then wash onto the black lava sand beach. At low tide smaller chunks wash ashore and at high tide the beach is blocked up with larger icebergs. We arrived at the Jökulsárlón Ice-Lagoon as a storm began to brew. Colby Brown was teaching a workshop of eager students and I had a really nice chat with him before I made my way over to the beach. The low tide meant that I could get down into the water, close to some of the smaller pieces of iceberg. I waited until a wave came up to the ice and then started firing away. I loved the way the water and the ice danced together over the black sand beach. Because the ice is so cold is is free of most air-bubbles. Additionally, silt from the nearby mountains gives the icebergs an amazing blue color. At one point the glacier touched the Atlantic Ocean but since 1970 has retreated almost a mile inland, creating this 7 square mile lagoon. Definitely one of the highlights of the trip! Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 17mm, f/11, 1.3 sec, ISO 100

Iced In

Inside an Ice-Cave Mendenhall Glacier, Juneau, Alaska I've always been fascinated by photos of ice-caves and in March I was lucky enough to visit 2 amazing caves in Iceland. The blue glacial color, the shapes, the water, and the rarity of them make these melting caves a fascinating subject. Willie and I wanted to visit more caves and we planned a trip to visit a gorgeous one at Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau Alaska. A friend of ours had visited the Mendenhall Ice-Caves the previous year and returned with some of the most amazing photos I've ever seen. We had heard reports that part of the cave had collapsed a few months prior to our visit but we never imagined that the massive cave would be completely melted by the time we arrived. After hiking a few miles through rain-forest and then down and onto the glacier we began our search for the caves. We searched and searched and could not find the cave! That's when I noticed a giant open pit that looked sort-of familiar ... the entire cave had melted! It was gone! :( We explored a mile long section of the glacier in search of other caves. We found a few small ones, we found some that would become larger in the coming years, and we stumbled upon some beautiful caverns, but nothing was quite like the cave that had melted just a few months earlier. Not wanting to give up, we walked down towards the edge of the glacier, just about to where the glacier ended and became Lake Mendenhall, and stumbled upon this small cave. It had just enough height clearance that we could pick our way across rocks to get inside and see it’s beautiful shape and flowing water. Worried that the glacial water would cause my tripod to become brittle and break, I quickly snapped a few photos of the cave. Though not the massive cave we had hoped to find, it still turned out to be a great trip! Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8: 14mm, f/14, 1/3 sec, ISO 100

Aurora Cave, Ice-Cave under glacier Vatnajökull, Iceland As water erods part of the glacier, caves form underneath. When the water washes away, these beautiful ice-caves are left behind. We were able to explore this cave for quite some time before anyone else showed up. I Loved the way these columns of ice formed inside the cave

Waterfall Cave

Waterfall Cave, Ice-Cave under glacier Vatnajökull, Iceland At SmugMug HQ we had an entire conference room dedicated to photos of ice-caves in Iceland. Most of the photos were taken by Iurie Belegurschi, who now runs photography workshops for a living and has some of the most amazing Iceland photos you'll ever see. There's this one photo of a man standing in the ice-cave with a giant waterfall gushing down it. Ever since I saw that photo I said to myself "I have to see this with my own eyes!" Inspiring people to travel is my main motivation for my photography, so I always love when someone else's photography motivates me to go see something unique. Entrepreneurs in Iceland run ice-cave tours, but most of those caves are dry when you go in them. Seeing an ice-cave with a waterfall -- now that's different! After visiting ice-caves in prior years I started reaching out to private ice-guides to see if any would be willing to take me to the waterfall cave. I found one and a few other photography friends and I decided to split the cost of the private tour. We met with our guide and promptly began driving out to the glacier in a gigantic raised 4x4 with huge wheels. Unfortunately we found ourselves stuck at one point due to snow/rain from the previous day causing a stream to fill with very wet, heavy snow. It took us about 30 minutes to dig the truck out and get going again. We then put on crampons and carefully made our way over the glacier and into the cave. Wow, what a sight! Unfortunately for us the delay meant the sunlight was starting to creep into the cave - creating harsh light spots and very difficult photo conditions. That didn't stop us. I knew I wanted to capture the water streaming in and placed the water as the main element in the photo. It's amazing how quickly the glaciers melt. On our way into the cave we came to a giant opening that we had to carefully climb down. Our guide instructed us that this had been the chamber I saw in the photo 2 years earlier. It was now completely exposed to the sky and the "waterfall" part of the cave was now lower and deeper in. Global warming in true form, right before our eyes. Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8: 14mm, f/13, 2.0 sec, ISO 100

Crystal Ice-Cave Vatnajökull, Iceland I loved the shape of the ice here in Crystal Cave.

Lucky Castle

Sunset at Castle Mountain Banff National Park, Canada When Willie and I flew into Calgary and drove to Banff we had high hopes for its season of "Ice and Fire". November has earned this reputation based on the beautiful pink and red sunsets that are more common during this month, while at the same time, Banffs lakes and rivers begin to freeze. On our first night in Banff we drove straight to Castle Mountain. Most of the riverbed was still flowing normally but we found a few patches where the shallow water was beginning to melt into neat patterns and shapes. We just had to sit and wait and hope that some clouds would arrive for sunset. When you photograph a sunset with this much depth between the foreground and the background, you often have to focus in multiple places, take a number of photos, and blend them together later. Sometimes this means you have to compose your photo before you know how much of the sky will be lit on fire, and that was the case here. While I hoped for more dragonplay in the sky, both Willie and I were pleasantly surprised with the pink clouds and the icy reflection we were treated to on our first night! Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8: 17mm, f/11, 0.8 sec, ISO 100

Generational

GenerationalFrozen Tenaya Lake Yosemite National Park, California For the first time since 1933 Tioga Rd, the northern road through Yosemite National Park, has been open this late into January. Due to the complete lack of snow the road has remained clear and the park authorities have left it open for travel. The temperatures in northern Yosemite are right around freezing during the day and much colder at night and all of the Tuolumne Meadows lakes have frozen over to the point where people are ice-skating all over them. Willie and I decided to take advantage of this once in a generation chance and drove up Sunday morning with the plan of shooting Tenaya Lake at sunset. The weather clouds looked promising and we saw perfectly partially cloudy skies all along the drive to Tenaya. We arrived early enough and spent a while scouting around the lake. At first we walked on the outside edge of the lake but after witnessing multiple people skating all over the lake we decided the frozen lake was thick enough for us to walk on. It turns out it was over a foot thick with ice! Plenty to support us. As we waited for sunset to come the unthinkable happened -- the clouds disappeared! Or should I say … they disappeared where we needed them. All around us were clouds but in the one scenic spot on Tenaya Lake, where our composition was setup, there were no clouds! Luckily a cloud rolled in just as the sun was setting but it wasn't enough to really light up. The sky got a bit pink and I was about to pull out some color in the sky but our hopes of awesome light were dashed. Oh well … it was at least neat to spend a day in Tenaya experiencing something we'll prob. never get to do again our lifetimes! Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 29mm, f/11, 2 sec, ISO 200, Tripod HiTech 0.6 Soft Grad ND

Aurora Cave, Ice-Cave under glacier Vatnajökull, Iceland As water erods part of the glacier, caves form underneath. When the water washes away, these beautiful ice-caves are left behind. We were able to explore this cave for quite some time before anyone else showed up. I Loved the way these columns of ice formed inside the cave

Aurora Cave, Ice-Cave under glacier Vatnajökull, Iceland On the other side of the ice-cave was a bit of flat ground before the real glacier started. We picked our way over some small streams and eventually there was another small cave. Colby and Joe lent us their crampons so we could climb into it.

Iced Over

Icebergs Wash Ashore at Sunset Jokulsarlon Ice Beach, Iceland One of the main attractions in Iceland is a giant Ice-Lagoon filled with icebergs as they melt off a glacier and float away into the Atlantic Ocean. The powerful waves break up the icebergs and push them back onto shore, where they wash up on a black lava sand beach. The ice-lagoon and the ice-beach were 2 of the spots that I desperately wanted to see on my first trip to Iceland. I first went to Iceland in the summer but the weather was so crummy we barely saw the sky until 10 days into the trip. I got a neat photo from the ice-beach but never with any color in the sky. When I went back a year later, in the winter, I got a lot luckier and for the first time I was able to enjoy the entire Icelandic landscape (I could finally see the mountain tops, the beautiful peaks, the hundreds of glaciers...) On this particular evening we were hanging out at the Jokulsarlon ice-beach and the sun just managed to peak its way out of the clouds and cast a little bit of orange light into the sky. Willie, Alan, Rebecca and I kept dashing back and forth, trying to get close to these icebergs while also not getting completely soaked. Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8: 17mm, f/20, 1.0 sec, ISO 100

Stuck

When we go to photograph an area, we often do a lot of research into which areas are known for specific scenes so that we have an idea of the options of things we can visit. When you live as close to Yosemite as we do, and go as often as we do, we tend to start to learn the area. Driving into the Valley, for example, you can stop at Tunnel View, check out Bridalveil Falls, visit the meadows, look at the reflection of El Capitan in the Merced River, visit the 3 Brothers, or even stop at Swinging Bridge and photograph the Merced River bank. After trying to photograph the 3 Brothers for sunrise we decided we'd head towards Yosemite Lodge for breakfast. Along the way we stopped at Swinging Bridge and decided to see if there was any frozen ice on the side of the Merced River. Not much. Under the bridge, however, was a small patch of frozen river and we made the best of it. I found this branch that was stuck in the ice. It was under the bridge and was the only spot that had frozen along the river. I loved the way the ice formed around the branch and made some amazing patterns, shapes, and veins. Willie and I both photographed it for many minutes (of course he did his photos after he saw mine :P). Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8: 58mm, f/11, 0.4 sec, ISO 100

Frozen Universe

Mendenhall Glacier Juneau, Alaska Willie, Andy, and I visited Juneau, Alaska for a chance to explore some of the ice caves at Mendenhall Glacier. You start out by walking through a temperate rain-forest (who knew there'd be a rainforest next to a glacier?!) and then eventually make your way down to glacier. The large ice-cave that we were hoping to explore had melted and instead of photographing ice-caves we had to find something else to photograph. On our final day in Juneau, Willie and I decided to hike back to Mendenhall Glacier and try our hand at some abstract photos of the jagged shapes of the flowing hunk of ice. We climbed to the top of a hill and looked down onto the glacier for a magnificent view. Using a telephoto lens I snapped over 370 photos of the glacier and combined them into a 932 megapixel image. Once stitched I could choose any part of the glacier to re-crop into an abstract view. In this 21 megapixel crop I loved the way the lines of the glacier draw into the jagged peaks in the middle, only to flatten out again at the top. Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8: 125mm, f/11, 1/100 sec, ISO 100

Frozen Bear

Polar Bear Shaped Icebergs at the Ice Lagoon Jökulsárlón, Iceland One of the most popular destinations in Iceland is the "Iceberg Lagoon" known as Jökulsárlón (pronounced Yo-Kool-Sar-Lon). The glacier you see in the background melts and forms the lake you see here. The icebergs float through the lake and out to sea where they wash up on the beach and then eventually melt away. We visited the Ice Lagoon and Ice Beach on 3 occassions and were mesmerized by different things each time. On our first visit the Ice Beach was littered with stunning ice-bergs as they spread out at low tide. Our second trip was at high tide and we spent time photographing the birds along the shore. On our third and final visit we enjoyed photographing the ice-bergs. I couldn't help but notice that this particular iceberg looks like a polarbear ... or 2 polarbears rather. Do you see it too? Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8: 145mm, f/9, 1/160 sec, ISO 100