As I have often found out over the last few years, sometimes the most memorable images come from moments you never planned for. What started as a straightforward drive through Iceland’s Central Highlands, with a very specific photo location in mind, turned into one of those rare situations where instinct, patience, and chance came together. Unusual weather conditions, and an urge to follow my gut feeling, led to an entirely different photograph than I had imagined but one that reminded me why staying open to the unexpected is such an essential part of landscape and drone photography. In this Behind The Shot story, I talk about a photo I captured last summer.
What Is ‘Behind The Shot’?
To me, photographs are strengthened by having a good story to support them. At its core, photography is the art of capturing memories and those memories deserve to be told & shared. With this new concept I want to tell people that story. I want to share what effort, struggle and sometimes luck is behind the publishing of that single image you might see in your social media feed. Every so often I will be sharing a photograph, or a series of photographs, which has a good story, a deeper meaning or a struggle behind it.
My original plan was to drive very deep into the Icelandic Highlands and photograph these interesting lakes.
The Journey That Was More Important Than The Destination
Yes, I know. Saying that “the journey is more important than the destination” is a cliché but it wouldn’t be a cliché if it wouldn’t be true. In early July, I was driving through my favorite region of Iceland, the Icelandic Highlands, on my way to one of the most remote photo locations I’ve ever visited during a single journey. My mission was to photograph a place that had long been on my photography bucket list. But, as it turned out, the journey there became far more important than my final destination. Whilst heading into the Highlands, I came across quite strange weather conditions. It was sunny, but simultaneously raining, while a strong wind blew dense clouds over my head. The bizarre thing was that this weather completely contradicted the original forecast, which had predicted no wind at all, let alone rain.
My gut told me this strange weather provided a great opportunity as it could be the perfect rainbow weather. So, I decided to scout a unique location that was only a small detour from my planned route. After a short detour of about twenty minutes, I arrived at the location. The wind was brutal and most drone pilots would probably not have considered flying but I still dared to launch my drone. After briefly testing the wind speed, and especially whether I could easily fly my drone back, I flew towards the so-called “tree of life“. At this (now popular) location, there’s a kind of dip in the landscape where moss grows on the sides. The earthen formation itself looks like a tree when seen from the air.
These two lakes are located in one of Iceland’s glacial rivers and are very hard to reach unless you hike or fly over them with a plane.
It was a stunning night, which never-ending light and lovely soft colours.
Even when the lakes were already in the shadow, there was still a glow coming over the nearby mountains which made them beautiful to photograph.
Circular Rainbow Anyone?
As soon as I got closer to my target with my drone, I discovered that my initial hunch was correct! On my screen, I saw a beautiful circular rainbow right next to “the tree”. But how could I best photograph it? First and foremost, I had to find the best position to get “the tree” perfectly centered in the circular rainbow. Getting my drone exactly between the sun and my subject required about four drone batteries. With each retry, I got closer and closer to the right position. Because the rainbow wasn’t permanently visible, I also had to wait regularly until it became visible enough to find the right position again. After each drone flight, I quickly copied the photos to my laptop so I could immediately create my panoramas in Lightroom. That way, I was sure I was getting the results I wanted. I don’t usually do that when I am out in-the-field, but because the conditions were so challenging (& tricky for panoramas), I wanted to be sure.
This was such an unexpected moment. It wasn’t at all what I’d planned to photograph, but I’m (obviously) very glad I trusted my instincts and took a chance.
The final image is a wide-angle panorama consisting of nine different photos (brackets), taken with the DJI Mavic 4 Pro. The entire circular rainbow was too large to capture in a single photo. No filters were used.
I also created a vertical panorama looking straight down. This way, you can also see part of the rainbow above the tree.
Revisiting The Tree
Surprisingly, later that summer, I revisited this “the tree” in somewhat similar conditions during one of the most challenging photo workshops I ran last year (thank you hurricane Erin). Because it was much later in the summer, the lighting conditions were very different which also meant I could a different kind of rainbow over “the tree”. In the end, I liked this version of my vertical photograph much more than the first one I managed to capture. I do this quite a lot where I take the same composition again & again to see if I can manage to get better results in different conditions.
Finally, I created this vertical panorama in a more unconventional way where I actually tilted the camera, rather than moved the drone, to get the position of the rainbow right. Because I kept the angle of tilt small, it still looks like it was shot straight down.
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