Þeistareykir area

We just posted a gallery album from the Þeistareykir area in North Iceland.

Check it out!

You might remember the earlier post with the tiny travel story from the Þeistareykir trip along with the recipe of the roast leg of lamb?

You never really got the hang of the pronounciation of that place?

The easy way of saying it is th-ay-sta-ray-keer.

The Iceland Express blog blogs about Iceland and uses a slideshow of Helga’s photos.

It’s cheaper than ever to visit Iceland now.

(and its insanely expensive to be an Icelander abroad these days…or and Icelander in Iceland).

Bodo has a license for The Waterfall of the Gods.

And that waterfall is on the road!

]]> http://www.stuckinphotos.com/?feed=rss2&p=175 http://www.stuckinphotos.com/?p=168 http://www.stuckinphotos.com/?p=168#comments Tue, 07 Oct 2008 01:13:13 +0000 volundur http://www.stuckinphotos.com/?p=168
Geir Haarde delivers his speech about the financial crisis in Iceland. 5 minutes later my grandfather calls and the first thing he mentions is that he likes my voice.

I think I saw pre-washed, exotic and mixed salad in plastic bags for the first time in Icelandic grocery shops 5 years ago. Fresh tuna at low-class restaurants 4 years ago, and today we have the prime minister interupting normal radio programs, to explain something about the Icelandic currency.

School has started, and me and Helga have not been shooting alot since the end of august. I’m doing my second semester in Modern Studies at the Uni of Akureyri. Helga is running her music school, teachin all possible instruments to all possible kids.

I’m fed up with the media. When I think about working at newspapers, simply gives me the creeps. The overload of shallow questions, the cheap way of making the article for no reason at all. Takin dumb photographs of skin-coloured socks, jewelery, statues, cd covers, purses, people who have no other purpose to go published than to sell something. And all this done under pressure. The art of making crap!

Pardon my language, but I truly think that the Icelandic media should do better, try and be remotly interesting, even to make stories that raises interest in human issues.

I’m working on an assignment these days for a “nordic masterclass in photojournalism”, which I am a participant in. I spent 3 days in September in Fredrikstad, Norway, with 15 nordic photographers, and three great instructors. Sören Pagter, a photographer and the head of the photographic department of the journalism school in Århus. Fred Ritchin, one of the top brains in Photography available, he was the picture editor for Sunday Times Magazine. And the third one is Kent Klich, amazing documentary photographer that has done work all around the world.

I’m working on my assignment these days (in fact I have to get my lazy ass going), and I will go back to Fredrikstad in November. The plan then is to edit picture for couple of days, and at the end we will have this book published. The other 15 photographers are quite a pack, very creative, and all of them have gotten amazing images done in the past years.

We took a small trip to Þeistareykir to photograph the test drilling sites.

This is an area not visited by tourists since it lies a good bit off the main roads. To get there you need to go to Reykjahlíð by Lake Mývatn, take the Hólasandur road and turn right on the 2nd road from the main Hólasandur road. Do not take the 1st road unless you have a big 4×4. That “road” leads you to Gæsadalur/Geese Valley and the beautiful Gæsatjarnir/Geese Ponds. (see photo for that road)

Once you have turned off the main gravel road and onto the 2nd on your right you have ahead of you a slow drive over the sands of Hólasandur. A desert like area. The road up by Bæjarfjall and Þeistareykir is a gravel road, but is easily passable by an ordinary car. Daníels KIA Clarus made it all the way!!

The Þeistareykir area is full of fumaroles, boiling mud springs and steam coming from underneat just about any rock, so be careful where you step. This is no place to be watching the clouds while having a walk!

An area full of hot springs, all the colors in the world under your feet, the earth bubbling with energy and heat. A wonderful place to visit and photograph.

In fact, we did go there on a friday, and again on a saturday to stay over night.

Þeistareykir used to be a farmstead in Reykjaheiði, now there stands a hut available for travellers to sleep in. The hottest “hotel” in the country, since the hut is heated with steam/hot water coing straight from the ground. A place loved by all travelling during winter, a place cursed by those who can not tolerate room temperatures of °30C while sleeping in the summer!

Once we got to the hut, Andri, Birkir and Daníel, set the bathtub to good use. For some reason there is a bathtub with cold water sitting outside the hut. Perfect for cooling drinks since there is no chance anywhere in the are to find a cool stream to store your drinkables.

Völundur fired up the BBQ and we had lamb, potatosalad, tomatoes, beansalad and red wine, while discussing the finer points (with a few sidetracks) of photography.

For those of you interested in Icelandic cooking, here is a recipe for roast leg of lamb ( we had bbq-ed slices of leg of lamb):

Take a leg of lamb with bone (approx. 1 1/2 kg.). Wash under running cold water and pat dry. Season with salt and pepper. I also like to use Aromat (flavour enhancer), Season-All, garlic and coriander. Quarter an onion and put in a roasting pan with the meat. It’s good to rub the meat with the onion before seasoning. Cover and insert into a heated oven (175-200° C.). Allow the meat to brown on the outside, about 15-20 minutes. Pour in some water to cover the bottom of the pan, and add more water as it evaporates. Baste the meat with the water and juices. The roast should stay in the oven for about 2 hours. After about 1 1/2 hours, take the roast out and pour off the cooking liquid. Return to the oven without covering, to brown. Use the cooking liquid to make the sauce.

Hungry yet? -I know I am!!

The day ended with a marathon session of The Þeistareykir Trivial Pursuit Championships, where it really didnt matter who won or lost.

Þeistareykjamóri, the local ghost of a dog, probably was roaming somewhere in the nearby Gjástykki lavafield because he left us in peace that night to sleep until the sun came up again.

The Church is probably has the funniest colours in the country, and is really all over a really amusing piece of architecture. Helga sat down at the old music aparatus in the church and played us the small melody of “Vísur Vatnsenda Rósu”

After the tune was played, I actually smiled like this.

A gorgeous night spent with our friend, Daníel,  waiting for the right light, and boy…did it show up!!

Please, feel welcome to comment, or drop us a line. About anything at all; the weather, the weekend, photography…..just whatever is on top of your mind.

Yeah….its here:

We just added a puffin gallery.

]]> http://www.stuckinphotos.com/?feed=rss2&p=120 http://www.stuckinphotos.com/?p=119 http://www.stuckinphotos.com/?p=119#comments Mon, 04 Aug 2008 02:55:55 +0000 hkvam http://www.stuckinphotos.com/?p=119 Always, and we say always check your backgrounds and corners for stray stuff/arms without a person attached/ half a household pet/general rubbish/a photographer etc.

You know…the elements that make a photo belong in the rubbish bin instead of being useable. Or make you reach for the crop tool.

Saying that, nobody is perfect and we never claimed we were(click on photos to enlarge-as with all thumbnails here on this page)

Hope you all had a great weekend.

Here in Iceland it was the bank-holiday weekend with numerous festivals all around the country. We headed to Siglufjörður where they had the annual Herring-adventure festival, a nostalgic trip to the days gone by when the herring fleet filled the fjords.

Monday looms around the corner, a lot of folks will be packing up their gear and heading home after a fun-filled weekend. We’ll be sweating the small stuff at the computers finishing up the post processing and tagging. Then we’re off once again.

Do check out our gallery, we just uploaded more of the Sigló Herring-adventure festival shots along with a few more. All comments are welcome

A totally recommended hike, but it’s so much more nicer if its a bit more cooler weather than 25C and no winds. We went with our friend Daníel, who by the way has not posted any photos because of screen failure, but is an awesome photographer, even though he insists Olympus makes the best cameras

We started the hike from the old farm at Hraun, the birthplace of Iceland’s beloved poet Jónas Hallgrímsson. A two hour hike up to the roots of the peaks, where we could play around with shouting into the wilderness just to hear the echoes (which proved handy once Völundur decided to stray a bit off-path to photograph the flora).

After having a picnic of dried-fish and fresh avocados, while thinking where the hell the creeks were (as Icelanders we were foolish enough to think we could rely on fresh water in abundant supplies running just about everywhere…not so after a couple of above-average temp weeks) we headed away from the peaks and towards the lake where Pastor Hallgrímur (Jónas’s father) drowned.

Lake Hraunsvatn’s depth varies when you look at different “reliable” sources, like maps and handbooks, but the average says it is around 50m deep. Greeting us with the soundtrack of a million gnats, and the most heavenly blue color, the fish making small circle ripples in the water; we decided to take a hike all around the the lake.

A family of Swans had taken up residence at the far side, 2 adults and 4 young ones, swimming stoically while we tried to gauge the thread-thin sheep tracks through the tightly woven fly nets on our heads while we made our way around the lake. All the while cursing as those tiny flies made the view blurred, the breathing unintentionally like eating small bits of flying proteins, buzzing in your hair, nose, ears, hair….and cursing loud as you came home to see how many the flies really were (see red circles on photo).

As the sun set we had reached full circle and decided to head down the mountainside, coming down at the farm Háls, where they run a restaurant called Halastjarnan/The Comet.

We soon found out that after spending a day at a quiet mountain lake, the feeling of walking along highway no. 1 was like a torture for all senses; the sounds, the smell, the shock wave of just another car going by felt a lot worse than cursing the numerous homely gnats flying carelessly in the sun where the small brooks gathered in a deep azure lake under the watchful eye of the peaks.

An awesome day!

Oh, and do check out the gallery link here at the top of the page, we do keep adding in as we go (and as we can), more will come in the next while.

-and don’t be shy to comment! We love your comments

……and if you hadn’t figured this out: its so cool…You can actually click on the photo’s thumbnails here on the blog and you get a much larger view.

If there are more than one photo in the post you can use your mouse to go left or right (of the photo in full view) and view them all in much bigger (and much nicer) size.

A short reminder; there are still a few postcards left from the summer collection if you’d like a couple, a few types are about to be sold out (as in only a couple left and literally so…). So if you want some, let me know!