Every summer I run a small Greenland photography workshop out of Ilulissat, a week spent among the icebergs of Disko Bay and along the edge of the Ilulissat Icefjord. Eight of us, the endless daylight, shooting from boats and flying drones over ice the size of buildings. People sometimes ask me why I keep coming back to the same little town with a camera when there is a whole world out there to photograph. I felt just sharing images of my most recent workshop is probably the best answer, while simultaneously also providing a look at what that week actually feels like. Let’s dive in!
The icebergs of the Ilulissat Icefjord veiled in a thin layer of fog.
Where This Workshop Actually Takes Place
The whole workshop is built around one town and one area: Ilulissat and Disko Bay, on the west coast of Greenland. Ilulissat sits right on the lip of the Ilulissat Icefjord, a UNESCO World Heritage site where one of the most active glaciers in the northern hemisphere feeds a steady procession of icebergs out into Disko Bay. We base ourselves here for about a week, close enough that the ice is never more than a short walk or a short boat ride away.
What makes it so special for a photographer, specifically, is the sheer scale of the place. These are not the tidy little bergs you might picture. Some of them are the size of buildings, occasionally whole city blocks, grounded in the mouth of the fjord and slowly breaking apart. In high summer the light stays long and low for hours, and on a calm day the water turns dark and mirror still, doubling everything above it.
Stepping off the plane this year, it simply felt good to be back. And the bay had a surprise ready for the first evening: fog. In all my years of coming to Ilulissat I had never had a proper foggy day to photograph there, and suddenly bergs the size of apartment blocks were dissolving and reappearing in the soft grey right in front of us. It made for some of the most interesting shooting of the whole week, and the conditions only got better from there.
The first evening’s fog turned the mouth of the Icefjord gold. I had never seen it like this before.
The scale out here is hard to overstate. This spire on top of one of the icebergs alone stands taller than most buildings back home.
Some of the locals of Disko Bay. Seabirds use the icebergs as resting spots between feeding runs.
Why Do I Keep Going Back To Ilulissat?
Honestly, it is because the place never repeats itself. I have stood in the same spot on the edge of that fjord more times than I can count, and I have never once had the same scene twice. The bay rearranges itself overnight. Wind, current and the calving of the glacier push the ice around so that a berg you photographed in the evening may be gone, or turned, or split clean in half by the morning.
I will be honest about the rest of it too, because a workshop is not a postcard. The weather up there can change fast, and the light may not play along on any given day. Some mornings you wait. But that unpredictability is exactly the draw for me. You cannot phone it in, and when it comes together it is like nowhere else I have worked.
This year summed it up nicely. The weather was excellent for almost the entire week, and the bay still never handed us the same scene twice. And the one patch that looked ‘wrong’ on paper, that foggy first evening, turned out to be shooting I had waited years for.
A boat threading its way through the ice as the fog came and went. Moments like this are why I never put the camera down here.
The bay rearranges itself constantly. By the next morning, this entire scene was gone.
Shooting From The Water
Some of the best photographs of the week come from getting off the land entirely. We take boat trips out into Disko Bay to shoot the icebergs from sea level and closer proximity, and it changes everything. From the shore you look across the ice. From a small boat you look up at it, and the difference in feeling is enormous. You get the reflections, the deep blue of the waterline, and the strange quiet broken by the crack and groan of the ice shifting.
Because the group is small, there is room for everyone to work properly. Nobody is fighting for a clear line over someone else’s shoulder. We can reposition the boat, wait for the light, and give each person the angle they came for.
This year, the whales stole the show entirely. We had encounter after encounter with humpbacks bubble-net feeding around the boat, some of them remarkably close, and every single participant went home with photographs of it. Watching that ring of bubbles tighten on the surface from an aerial perspective and knowing what is about to come up through it… the drones (and cameras) went quiet and then very, very busy. I should be honest: whales are wild animals and no summer is guaranteed to deliver them like this one did. But when the summer residents of Disko Bay decide to put on a show, there is nowhere better to be than in a small boat with your cameras or drones out.
The start of a bubble net seen from above. The whale spirals below the surface, sealing the krill in with a ring of bubbles.
Two humpbacks cruising just beneath the surface after a feeding happened. Their white pectoral fins glow turquoise through the water.
One of the most beautiful patterns I saw during the entire trip. It was also one of the last images I captured with my drone.
Multiple humpbacks erupting through the surface at once during a feeding. Orchestrated chaos, in the best way.
You can read the whole hunt in the water: the spiral, the trails, and the whales regrouping for the next round.
Every gull in the bay knows what that ring of bubbles means. So did we, after the first outing with our charter boat.
Drone Work Over The Ice
This is the part I am probably best known for, and the part that surprises people most. Flying over the Icefjord gives you a view you simply cannot get any other way. From above, the ice reads as pattern: the cracks, the veins of meltwater, the way the bergs pack together and the true scale of the thing finally makes sense. A top-down frame of the ice can look almost abstract, like marble, and a high, oblique line down the fjord shows you just how far the ice runs.
I should answer the most common questions I get: you do not need to fly a drone to join. However, if you do bring one, you will not be disappointed. The aerial and drone work is my speciality and I am happy to share how I do it, but plenty of people on the trip never touch a controller. If you do want to go deeper on the technique, I cover a lot of it in my drone photography masterclass.
Taking off and landing from a boat is the tricky part, and this year I spent a good chunk of every trip out as a sort of air traffic controller, launching and catching drones for anyone who did not fancy doing it themselves over open water. It was worth every minute: the bubble-net feeding was especially spectacular from above. That frame, the ring of bubbles closing with the whales rising through the middle of it, is one I had dreamt about for years… and this year everyone on the trip got it. One of the group had flown his drone for less than an hour before the trip and went home with aerial whale shots he is thrilled with and most people would be envious of.
From above, the ice reads as pattern. The turquoise shelf is the part of the berg you never see from the boat.
A low pass along an iceberg’s “spine”, showing how far the ice runs towards the horizon.
Details like this are why I love flying close, and carefully. The patterns are truly endless.
Three worlds in one frame: the ridge above, the shelf below, and the deep water beyond.
The weirdest combination of ice-shapes on one single iceberg I have ever seen.
Freshly turned ice below the glacier front, layer upon layer of compressed snow pressed into stripes.
A fresh collapse from the side of an iceberg shows how alive these giants are. We keep our distance and let the drone do the close approach.
One of those photographs that stops making sense the longer you look: circular ridges in the ice, almost like a human designed it.
What 24-Hour Light Does To A Shooting Day
In high summer this far north, the day has no real end. The sun does not properly set at all, which completely rewrites how a shooting day works. There is no race against a sunset, no hard cut-off where the light dies. Instead you get hours and hours of that long, low, golden quality, and you learn to shoot at times that would feel absurd anywhere else.
It takes a day or two to adjust. Then you stop fighting it and start using it, heading out late when the bay has gone quiet and the light is at its best. Trip timing shifts from year to year, so how much of this you get can vary, but in the heart of summer the light is the thing people remember most.
One evening this year at the Icefjord, it started to snow. In full midnight sun. Golden light on the bergs and snowflakes drifting through it at the same time, two things my brain kept insisting do not belong in the same frame. Nobody was watching the clock that night.
We were still out shooting in the middle of the night, while it actually looked like the middle of the day. Add a little snow on top of that, and you get this magical scene.
A Small Group, On Purpose
For the workshops I guide on my own in Western Greenland, I cap the group at eight, and I do it deliberately. Eight is the number that fits properly on the boat, that lets me give real attention to each person, and still makes for a good group to spend a week with. I have taught bigger groups before, and there is only so much you can actually give a larger group of people. With eight, I can sit down with you over your images, work through a specific problem, and actually see it click.
This year’s trip tested that group dynamic before we had taken a single image: six of us, my own bag included, had our luggage left behind in Iceland and did not see it again for four days. And the atmosphere stayed brilliant regardless. Gear was shared, jokes were made, and the shooting never stopped. Eight strangers turning into that kind of team within a couple of days, and easily it’s my favourite thing about running this trip.
My Five Favourite Images Of This Photo Workshop
We shoot a lot in a week like this one, and narrowing it all down is always the hardest part. Here are the five frames that stood out for me, and why.
Everything the week was about in one capture: the bubble nets, the whales doing their orchestrated “dance”, and every gull in the bay arriving for their share.
Shot on the DJI Mavic 4 Pro.
Snow in the midnight sun at the Icefjord. I had no idea until I experienced it, but this must have been unconsciously on my bucket list of things to experience.
Shot on the Canon EOS R6 Mark III.
I really loved this spire and I circled it for a long time trying to find a good perspective on it. It also took me quite a while to get in close enough, in a safe way, before settling on it.
Shot on the DJI Mavic 4 Pro.
The bubble net closes. This is the shot I had dreamt about for years, and this summer every single participant went home with their own version of it.
Shot on the DJI Mavic 4 Pro.
Below the Eqi glacier front, where this chunk of ice had just flipped around. Thanks to my drone, I was able to get in close enough to capture this amazing foreground.
Shot on the DJI Mavic 4 Pro.
Frequently Asked Questions
When Does Jeroen Run His West Greenland Photography Workshop?
I run it every summer. It is an annual trip, though the exact timing can shift from year to year, so I never pin it to a fixed month. There is no dated departure on sale right now, but you can get on the waitlist to be the first to hear when the next one opens.
How Many People Does Jeroen Take On The Greenland Workshop?
Eight, capped deliberately. It keeps things comfortable on the boat and means everyone gets proper individual attention.
What Will I Photograph On Jeroen’s Ilulissat Workshop?
The icebergs of Disko Bay and the Ilulissat Icefjord, shot from land, from boats out on the water, and from the air by drone. And when the bay plays along, whales, sometimes feeding right beside the boat.
Do I Need To Fly A Drone To Join Jeroen’s Greenland Workshop?
No. Drone work is my speciality and it is there if you want it, but it is not a requirement. Plenty of people come purely for the boat and land photography.
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