AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY IN ICELAND
Last month I spent around 3 weeks in Iceland running a couple of landscape photography workshops there. Between the two workshops we had a day off and along with a couple of the participants, I decided to take the opportunity to do a photography flight in a light aircraft above the river deltas and highlands. It's something I've wanted to do for a couple of years and it really didn't disappoint. We chartered the small Cessna from Atlanstflug and everything went really smoothly. The plane is perfect for photography, with wings above the fuselage (so they don't obstruct your view down) and windows that open allowing you to shoot without the glare and reflections from the glass glass and perspex. The pilot was great at getting us above some incredible views and slowly zig-zagged to ensure people on both sides of the plane got great views, and the 90 minute flight was excellent from beginning to end as we moved from the river beds on the south coast, up along the valley to Thormsork, across the southern highlands all the way up to Landmmanalaugar.
Photography was challenging from a moving plane and fast shutter speeds are necessary. Between 1/500 and 1/1000 will keep the image sharp, so you have to increase the ISO a little and open the aperture on the lens as wide as possible (depth of field isn't an issue when shooting from this height, so there's no need to worry about that). Video however was much harder as the plane did vibrate and move around in the air so keeping the shot steady for more than a couple of seconds was almost impossible. Nevertheless, I've put together a short video about the flight which I've shared on my Youtube channel and at the bottom of this blog.
Below is a selection of the images from the flight which show the diversity of land we covered in such a short flight.
