Kiddi Kristjáns' photostream  

I was at Clichélake (Kleifarvatn, a.k.a. Klisjuvatn) last night with two friends of mine. It was the first clear night sky opportunity we got in a few weeks so we went out with absolutely no hesitation and high hopes of aurora. The weather was wonderful and we got a constant showing of auroras for most of the night but unfortunately nothing particularly spectacular. I had to try out my new 225 lumen Led Lenser M7T led flashlight so I challenged my friend OliHar for a duel.

I have just returned from one of the greatest photo trips of my life. I went with 5 other photographer-friends on two cars, to the south-east corner of Iceland, a total of about 575km away from Reykjavik. It was a 3 day trip in total, and during that time we got to experience almost the complete catalog of icelandic weather, which is quite extensive I might add. We saw glaciers, glacier lagoons, seals, wild reindeers, volcanic ash, lush moss, snowy white mountain ranges and green ones too. We saw winter and summer at the same time. I took about 1200 pictures in total and I know I'm going to have a lot of trouble sorting through them, there's lots and lots to pick from. This particular photo was taken today, on our way back. I didn't have anything wider than a 35mm lens with me at the moment so I did a vertical stitch with 3 overlapping frames from the Zeiss ZE Distagon T* 35/2 lens with the Lee Filters 105mm Circular Polarizer mounted on it for maximum rainbowery. More to come!

I've had it with the weather! It's been downright horrible for the past few months, cloudy, raining, windy and I'm going nuts. So nuts in fact, I'm shooting lens test charts and doing comparisons back and forth in my very little valuable spare time instead of being outside shooting. I did get one morning of rather decent weather though, and it didn't take much consideration to decide walking to work. It's 5.5km from my apartment to my office and the route fortunately goes through downtown. I happened to have the new Zeiss Distagon T* 35/1.4 ZE in my hands (borrowed copy) and was happy to get a chance to try it on something other than test charts and toys at the office. For those interested, the ZE 35/1.4 is definitely the better lens of the two Zeiss 35's that are available today. But I'm not quite sure if it's worth the extra weight & money. If you have questions, feel free to mail me. I've also aquired more new gear that I'm dying to try out, for example the 105mm Lee Polarizer & Canon EOS 7D camera - hopefully I'll get a chance to try the new stuff out before I sell it for something else :-)

Finally got some extra time these days, as my more frequent photo uploading suggests. This is taken close to my home, a popular spot for nighttime photography, and more importantly - aurora photography. This location has been covered many times before, but I've never shot it before with an 85mm lens. The auroras were weak and far away, so the exposure time was irrelevant. Usually we try to limit exposure time as much as possible to maintain details in auroras, but when they're this far away, it's all the same.

I'm in a photography limbo these days, and the past year or two actually. Only being able to take the gear out once a month has changed my approach to photography. I don't process photos nearly as much as I used to. I don't mind doing the most overdone cliches, I don't even try to make them better than the others - I'm so happy being out I don't care if my stuff is original or not. I'm guessing my photography has more to do with getting out of the house, than anything else. And gear aquisition syndrome. I may not be taking photos, but man do I love camera gear.

On our way back from that aurora trip (see last upload) we had the most beautiful day, not a even a single breeze. It was a nice welcome after all these weeks of snowing & all-round horrible weather. It was also nice to see some sun, we were long overdue for some vitamin D. The sun is probably at or close to it's highest position in this photo, for this time of year. Man I can't wait for summer.