Good Light Hunting

Akranes Boat Wreck

The wreck of the fishing boat Sigurdur AK17 sits on the beach next to a boat yard at Akranes in western Iceland. Sally, John and I spent a couple of hours here shooting this and the pair of nearby lighthouses in May last year. At that time of year in Iceland, you get daylight just about around the clock. Having arrived in Iceland the day before, we weren’t quite used to this and lost track of the time. When we finished shooting this boat, we had to rush to find somewhere to eat dinner as it was after 9pm and the small town of Akranes was beginning to close for the night, although the light made it seem like late afternoon.

Although it appears to be quite dark in this shot, that is just how I saw the image in my minds eye when shooting the long exposure and I have darkened the sky in post processing. The blurred clouds were created in camera with 16 stops of Formatt Hitech ND filters and an exposure time of 4 minutes. The black and white conversion was done with Alien Skin Exposure 7, using the Kodak Technical Pan preset which I modified by adding a vignette.

Prints available here.

Stokksnes Lighthouse in Iceland

Stokksnes is a headland just to the east of Hofn and is reached via an unmade up road from route 1 next to the western end of the Almannaskard Tunnel. The lighthouse is next to a radar station, which was once a NATO base but is now used for commercial air traffic control. Nearby is a beach with black sand dunes and we spent a good couple of hours in the area taking photos. This photo is a four minute long exposure using 10 and 6 stop Formatt Hitech IRND filters stacked together.

Prints available here.