Eloquent Images by Gary Hart
Insight, information, and inspiration for the inquisitive nature photographer
Know Your Subjects
Posted on March 7, 2022
Alpenglow, Kirkjufell, Iceland
Sony a7RIV
Sony 16-35 f/2.8 GM
3 seconds
F/16
ISO 100
One of my personal rules for photography is knowledge of my subjects—I simply get more pleasure from an image when I know something about what I’ve captured. Of the many potential subjects available to a landscape photographer, mountains have always been a particular draw for me. Living my entire life in the shadow of the Sierra Nevada has certainly influenced that connection, as have fond memories of family camping trips in the mountains throughout my childhood, and Sierra backpack trips with friends in my teens and beyond. In college I even majored in geology for several semesters (after astronomy, but before eventually earning my bachelor’s degree in, yawn, economics), and was most interested in the processes responsible for mountain building: tectonics and volcanism.
Kirkjufell, Iceland
Given all this, I guess it makes sense that after returning from last month’s Iceland trip I found myself digging a little deeper into the origins of Kirkjufell, the prominent peak that is arguably Iceland’s most recognizable landmark. Game of Thrones fans who recognize Kirkjufell (Arrowhead Mountain) will be relieved to know that, after several visits over the last few years, I can confirm that the White Walkers appear to have moved on. (But come to think of it, maybe that shouldn’t be much of a relief….)
Kirkjufell rises slightly more than 1500 feet above Breiðafjörður Bay on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula. Given Iceland’s volcanic origins, it would be reasonable to assume that this cone-shaped peak is just one of of the island’s many volcanos. But that assumption would be incorrect. Skeptical? The mountain’s clearly visible parallel strata layers are a giveaway that Kirkjufell is not a volcano. (And viewing from other angles would reveal that Kirkjufell isn’t really cone-shaped either.)
Though many of Kirkjufell’s layers were indeed laid down by lava or explosive debris from nearby volcanos, these igneous layers are interspersed with layers of submarine sediment deposits, each layer a product of the environment at the time of its deposition. Kirkjufell’s base layer was a large lava flow that happened sometime in the last 5 to 10 million years (relatively recently in Earth’s grand geological picture). After that came millions of years of alternating sediment and volcanic deposits, separated by thousands or millions of years for which there’s no record.
This assortment of parallel layers created a horizontal layer cake of strata bearing no resemblance to the mountain we know today (or any mountain for that matter). Because all sedimentary layers are deposited horizontally, and Kirkjufell has a slight SE-NW tilt, it would also be reasonable to assume that at some point since the last layer went down, the entire area to the southeast rose relative to the area northwest.
Once all Kirkjufell’s layers were deposited and tilted, the area was squeezed between two glaciers that carved away most of the surrounding rock, leaving the remaining peak jutting above the glaciers like an island. When the glaciers retreated, the peak we see today remained.
Twilight colors
The other striking feature in this image is the pink that spreads in the shadowless pre-sunrise/post-sunset sky of civil twilight, when the sun is around six degrees or closer to the horizon. Sometimes called the “Belt of Venus,” we get this color because the only the longest, red wavelengths are able to traverse the atmosphere once the sun drops below the horizon.
The interface between the Belt of Venus and the blue-gray Earth’s shadow directly is called the “twilight wedge,” a designation earned because you can sometimes see the earth’s curve in the shadow, with its apex at the anti-solar point (directly opposite the sun). At sunset, the gradual upward motion of the shadow gives the appearance of a wedge being driven into the darkening sky.
About this image
I won’t pretend that there’s anything especially unique about my composition here (and I have the pictures to prove it)—it’s one of those scenes that improves more with conditions than composition, especially if you haven’t been here enough to get really familiar with it.
Because this was the first evening of photography for Don Smith’s and my 2022 Iceland photo workshop, Don and I stayed especially close to the group. From past visits I knew that to align Kirkjufell and Kirkjufellsfoss (the waterfall), you’re pretty limited for places to set up, but we managed to find prime tripod real estate for everyone. I encourage my groups to move around as much as possible, but the thick snow and steep drop to the river further limited our mobility, so we just lined up along the cable barrier between the trail and the drop. And because there were other people besides our group out there, once you landed a vantage point, you were pretty much stuck there until someone moved.
Given the mobility limitations and my desire to align the mountain and waterfall, my composition options were mostly focal length choices. Another, self imposed, compositional limitation was my desire to exclude the footbridge just out of my frame on the left. I like to believe that if I’d have been here by myself, with lots of time to explore, I’d have come up with something a little more creative. But I’m certainly not complaining—between the fresh snow and beautiful sky, the conditions for photography were off the charts and everyone was thrilled.
This image came late in the shoot, just as the twilight wedge reached peak color. By then I was pretty familiar with all my composition options and opted to go with my Sony 16-35 f/2.8 GM lens at 17mm (an my Sony a7RIV body). Turns out my resulting composition is remarkably similar to my northern lights image from later that night, and a sunrise image I captured here 3 years ago. Since I clearly have this composition nailed, I’ll need to challenge myself to find something different next year.
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More Magnificent Mountains
Border Patrol
Posted on January 10, 2021
Frozen, Kirkjufellsfoss, Iceland (2020)
Sony a7RIV
Sony 24-105 G
1/2 second
F/9
ISO 200
A year ago Don Smith and I, with the aid of our Icelandic guide (the legendary Óli Haukur), had a blast sharing Iceland’s winter beauty with a great group of photographers. But our trip wasn’t without its challenges. One of our earliest locations was Kirkjufell, arguably Iceland’s most recognizable mountain. While proponents of Vestrahorn might debate this, no one will deny that everyone who visits Iceland wants a picture of Kirkjufell, just as everyone visiting Yosemite wants a picture of Half Dome. And even though Kirkjufellsfoss (the nearby waterfall) is gorgeous and the obvious foreground for Kirkjufell images, the mountain really is the main event here.
Frozen Sunrise, Kirkjufell, Iceland (2019)
So imagine our disappointment on the morning our workshop group visited Kirkjufell and found the mountain completely obscured by clouds. Not only that, the temperature was 25 degrees (F), and a 40 MPH wind made it feel like 5 degrees and turned the sleet into rocketing needles. In other words, it was stupid-cold. Nevertheless, our hardy group geared up, braved the short trudge out to the vista, and went to work without complaint.
While waiting for Kirkjufell to emerge (fingers crossed), I turned my attention to the tiered, multi-channel, ice-encrusted Kirkjufellsfoss. In normal conditions, while waiting for the Kirkjufell to appear it would have been natural to fire off a few oooh-that’s-pretty clicks of the waterfall. But without the distraction of Kirkjufell (or anything else more than 1/2 mile away), I set up my tripod and actually worked the scene like an actual photographer (go figure). And as often happens when I spend quality time with a scene, the longer I worked this one, the more I saw.
Border patrol
With so much going on, the trickiest part of making this image was managing all the scene’s visual elements while minding my frame’s borders. As much as we try be vigilant, sometimes the emotion of a scene overwhelms our compositional good sense—we see something that moves us, point our camera at it, and click without a lot of thought. While this approach may indeed capture the scene well enough to save memories and impress friends, it’s far from the best way to capture a scene’s full potential. So before every click, I do a little “border patrol,” a simple mnemonic that reminds me to deal with small distractions on the perimeter that can have a disproportionately large impact on the entire image. (I’d love to say that I coined the term in this context, but I think I got it from Brenda Tharp—not sure where Brenda picked it up.)
To understand the importance of securing your borders, it’s important to understand that our goal as photographers is to create an image that not only invites viewers to enter, but also persuades them to stay. And the surest way to keep viewers in your image is to help them forget the world outside the frame. Lots of factors go into crafting an inviting, persuasive image—things like compositional balance, visual motion, and relationships are all essential (and topics for another day), but nothing reminds a viewer of the world outside the frame more than an object jutting in or cut off at the edge.
When an object juts in on the edge of a frame, it often feels like part of a different scene is photobombing the image. Likewise, when an object is cut off on the edge of the frame, it can feel like part of the scene is missing. Either way, it’s a subconscious and often jarring reminder of the world beyond the frame.
And there are other potential problems on the edge of an image. Simply having something with lots of visual weight—an object with enough bulk, brightness, contrast, or anything else that pulls the eye—on the edge of the frame can throw off the balance and compete with the primary subject for the viewer’s attention.
To avoid these distractions, I remind myself of “border patrol” and slowly run my eyes around the perimeter of the frame. Sometimes border patrol is easy—a simple scene with just a small handful of objects to organize, all conveniently grouped toward the center, usually requires minimal border management. But more often than not we’re dealing with complex scenes containing multiple objects scattered throughout and beyond the frame.
In this Kirkjufellsfoss scene I had to contend with ice, rocks, snow, and flowing water. The biggest problem was an assortment of randomly dispersed rocks jutting from the snow at bottom of the frame, and a railed pathway visible just above the fall. It wasn’t too hard to eliminate the path with careful placement of the top of my frame, but if my entire focus had been on the waterfall the rocks might have been overlooked. Border patrol. Placing the bottom of my frame a little higher would have cut off the large rock near the bottom-center, an important compositional element that combines with the fall to create a virtual diagonal; placing the bottom lower would have introduced more rocks that I’d have had to cut off somewhere. Instead, I was able find a clean line of snow that traversed the entire bottom of my frame: perfect! (And lucky.)
One other important compositional element that would have been easily easy to overlook is the switchback snow-line that enters the frame at the bottom and exits at the top (or vice-versa). Diagonals like this are strong compositional elements that I love including whenever possible, so I chose a horizontal composition to allow room for each switchback to complete. The eye subconsciously follows lines like this, so cutting them off on the edge of the frame is an tacit invitation to exit the scene, something I try to check for when I execute my border patrol.
Of course nature doesn’t often cooperate and I’m usually forced to chop off parts of visual elements. When I do this, I always want it to be a conscious decision that doesn’t make my viewer think that I’ve cut off something that belongs in the scene, or that something jutting in is part of a different scene. Usually when I have to cut something on the edge (often impossible to avoid), I try to do it boldly, somewhere near the middle of the object, to signal that was my intent and not just an oversight.
I realize because these things are often only noticed on a subconscious level they may seem trivial, but every image is house of cards comprised mostly of small decisions, and you never know which one might send it crashing down.
Epilogue
I did end up photographing Kirkjufell this morning, but didn’t get anything that thrilled me.
Minding the Border
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Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 