This is the time of the year when I take a break from my daily job and head somewhere cold to do a bit of landscape shooting. The current situation, however, forced me to revise my original plans – instead, I decided to take a trip back to Iceland lying deep inside my hard disk. As I went through my long forgotten files, I recalled this absolutely amazing morning I had at Vestrahorn (Stokksnes).
Vestrahorn is a 454m high mountain ridge on Stokksnes peninsula in East Iceland, about a 20 minute drive from the town of Hofn. The breathtaking beauty of the place lies in its ascents rising steep from the flat black sand beach and sea, as well as in its isolation and photogenic shape. When I saw it for the first time many years ago, I was stunned. I felt like I got very close to the way the Earth looked when it was made. The flip side of the magnificence of the place is that it attracts enormous interest from photographers and tourists. I actually did not even pull the camera out when I ventured there back in 2012; first, it was midday, second, there were plenty of people walking the sand dunes and the beach making it impossible to create anything meaningful.
I do not remember why but I could not return the next morning and then we moved on. But I kept it in my memory as one of the most staggering spots in Iceland. And I have seen plenty incredible images in the years to follow, which in fact made me avoid Stokksnes until my very recent trip last year.
