The Volcano Expedition

Going to see the volcano in March we took a picture of the information sign. To show where every thing was located, I marked the main points of interest on the photo. Red for the erruption of Fimvörduháls, blue for the icy glacier that will later on - just short time after our trip there - will become "that volcano in Iceland" that stopped air trafic forever.

The green marker above these spots is where we parked to watch the erruption and took these pictures and videos. After the Eyjafjallajökull errupted that valley was not visible anymore but turned into the run off for the melt water.

click to enlarge, then you can actually read a lot of it!

On the drive to the volcano we saw the drastic demonstrations of accident risks.

drastic!

valley of Thorsmörk

The valley into Thorsmörk was not drivable on the Throsmörk side but on the opposite side of the valley. On the map you can see where that is. This is the view towards the erruption from the valley side. The steam marks the lava flows.






Amazing view of Eyjafjallajökull from the valley side - when it was still a glacier and all calm.

blue ice

The look of icebergs is amazing. The blue of the condensed and water saturated ice is shining almost out of its own. This is one more picture of Jökulsárlón in Iceland that I posted about earlier.

Foxes close up

This year in the Westfjords we got to meet a lot of arctic foxes. We really love these encounters and are happy to bring home so much evidence of undisturbed wildlife as this.

Sorry, but we are not going to tell - online anyways - where exactly we met the foxes. We do not want to make people search for them with our help. But I show what I found.

 

Photo Documentation: Maple Syrup - Part 2

This post continues the documentation about Maple Syrup that I started here.

In diesem Post setze ich die Dokumentation über Ahornsirup fort, die ich hier angefangen habe.

The sap is being pre-reduced before it flows into the open pan. It ondulates through the lines, beginning on the very left and cooking down more and more as it flows towards the right. It can then be removed from the pan.

Der Saft wird zunächst vorreduziert, dann fließt er in die offene Pfanne. Diese ist in Schlangenlinien eingeteilt. Der Saft fließt zunächst durch die Reihe ganz links, bis er am Ende an der rechten Seite am weitesten eingekocht ist und abgefüllt werden kann.

To cook down the sap, the boiling pan is fired from underneath. This eats up a lot of wood each winter.

Um den Saft herunter zu kochen, brennt darunter ein Feuer. Das verbraucht jeden Winter eine Menge Holz.

When the sap cooks down it turns from clear to amber. The temperature guage shows the final temperature of the sap.

Während der Ahornsaft herunterkocht wird er von klar zu bernsteinfarben. Dies ist das Thermometer an der Siedepfanne.

_

Westfjords bay

Another view of the cliff faces along the bay. Kálfatifa this one is called in Hornvík, Iceland. The light hit it just right that day.

Jökulsárlón in the sunset

The bridge to the Ice.

At Jökulsárlón, southern Iceland, we spent hours and hours once at sunset and once in the daytime and took picutres. Well, seeing the unusual setting there, who would hold it against us?

Jökulsárlón is a unique place in Iceland. I did write about it already, but I didn't fully explain, I guess.

The Vatnajökull glacier flows down of the mountain bowl it lies in in several directions at once. Several of those end in lagoons of a special kind: The glacier tongues are so close to the ocean shore, that there was pretty much just the beach to seperate the ice from the salt water. The ice retreated, partially from climate change but mostly from the contact with saltwater which has a lower freezing point and melts ice faster. The glacier is now 7 kilometers back from the place of the bridge. About 70 years ago it was a little further down than the bridge now is.

The place the lagoon is now in is very deep and wide. The glacier tongue in the back calves these gigantic icebergs, that float in the lagoon until they break appart in pieces small enough that they swim down the little river that this photo was taken on. The river is shallow and therefore only little pieces float down.

The icebergs seen in other postings in my blog are the usual: 10 % above water, 90 % underneath. I thought, they would take a while to melt and break. I was pretty shocked, though, to hear that in average it takes 7 years for the icebergs to melt and swim out.

At the sea shore the ice fragments are thrown back onto the beach a lot so we did take awesome photos there, too. But that is for other posts as well as our amphibic vehicle trip over the lagoon and the awesome other lagoon we went to - without the stream of tourists.

click to enlarge to full size

This bridge photo is a HDR from 3 exposures, merged in Dynamic Photo HDR, my favorite HDR program. I know most people favor Photomatix, which I own, too, but I just love my Dyn. Ph. HDR.

This view is from the sea shore side up towards the glacier. It would have been even more perfect if the seal that we saw swim in and out of the lagoon would have popped his head just this moment. But such luck would be more than improbable with a setting like this and the bracketing setup.


By the way: There are several posts in this blog already about this place (Jökulsárlón). If you want to see more, search the tags or follow this link: Tag Jökulsárlón

Reykjavík in the sunshine

The sun was bright and the colors tried to match up. This photo came about in the harbour of Reykjavík, Iceland.

Bei hellem Sonnenschein haben sich die Farben alle Mühe gegeben. Dieses Photo entstand im Hafen von Reykjavík, Island.

 

Westfjord sunset

The sunsets around mid summer night up in the Westfjords are just amazing. The sun gets lower than you expect and goes down for so long. Here is what that looks like. Or can look like.

skuas in the air

The great Skua. I really started to have respect of these birds. They are big and their beaks are sharp and strong. You really do not want to mess with them. But they are pretty to look at. These characters we found near Jökulsárlón, southern Iceland.

Die große arktische Raubmöve. Ich habe wirklich langsam Respekt vor diesen Vögeln bekommen. Die sind groß, ihre Schnäbel scharf und kräftig und man will sich wirlich nicht mit ihnen anlegen. Aber sie geben ein gutes Motiv ab. Diese Kandidaten haben wir in der Nähe der Jökulsárlón, Südisland, gefunden.

 

in Ísafjordur at night

This bike was parked at the Hotel Edda. Someone really loves it,I guess.

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this rocks...

I have started building these rock pyramids, but I have to admit: This one I did only take the photo - my husband built the stack.

This photo was part of a series of rocks I did on the coast near Vík, southern Iceland, actually near Dyrholaey.

Porsche

Why it was there I do not know. But this beautiful Porsche showed up on the edge of Jökulsárlón, southern Iceland, just when we were there. We saw it several times again on our way back west along the southern coast, when we headed to Vík and further on that night. It was traveling on a trailer, of course.

Here is how we saw it.

Ich weiß nicht, warum er dort war, aber dieser Porsche tauchte plötzlich an der Jökulsárlón, Südisland auf, gerade als wir dort mit den Kameras herumliefen. Auf dem Rückweg Richtung Vík und weiter haben wir ihn noch einige Male gesehen, allerdings auf einem Anhänger.

fly over, southern coast

Unfortunately this picture suffered from the airplane window. But the scene and the motive made me show it anyways.

This is Iceland's southern coast, looking down on the Westmaennar Islands in the front. Behind, on land, you see Eyafjallajökull and the flow of debris into the ocean where the 2010 erruption changed the landscape. Behind it you see Mirdralsjökull, then in the back Vatnajökull, just faintly.

This scene was just too nice, especially in the light of the sunrise, one early morning in August 2011. So I needed to post this here.

glacial warning

Sometimes you find warning signs in Iceland. This one is at a popluar glacial tongue.

Warnschilder sind in Island eher selten, aber dieses haben wir am Fuße einer beliebten Gletscherzunge gesehen.

 

fun in the rain

no words needed after three days of rain and fog, right?

evening sun

Relaxing after dinner in the sunset, overlooking the bay.

rock in a rock

If you throw enough pebbles in a place you will find one that is really odd.

Wenn man genügend Kiesel an einen Platz wirft, findet man einen, der seltsam ist.

 

Waves

On the boat out to the Westfjords, we had waves wash up the side windows. I could not resist taking pictures of the distorted reality that was created.

Auf dem Boot in die Westfjorde haben die Wellen die Fenster überspült. Ich konnte es nicht lassen, Bilder der verzerrten Umgebung zu machen, die ich zu sehen bekam.

 

Dirt roads

Easy to say that something is a dirt road. But how dirty roads really can be and how dirty cars can become on these roads we see on our trips to the Westfjords in Iceland a lot. This status of a car seems impossible with just random dirt floating around.

cats

I don't have a cat but I like cats and do take photos of them occasionally.

Here is one with pretty eyes:

In the glacial lagoon

At Jökullsárlón we looked at the icebergs floating. The colors were amazing in all shades of white, grey, blue and turquoise.

In der Jökullsárlón haben wir die schwimmenden Eisberge beobachtet. Die Farben variierten zwischen weiß, grau, blau und türkis.

Reykjavík harbour

The harbour of Reykjavík, Iceland in summer of 2011. The new conference center is in the background.

Der Hafen von Reykjavík, Island, im Sommer 2011. Das neue Konferenzzentrum sieht man im Hintergrund.

Icebergs

We went to Jökullsárlón in Iceland this summer. The icebergs that drifted out of the lagoon and into the ocean were mostly washed up on the beach and posed for pictures relaxedly. We took far too many photos and there are never enough posts in this blog to show them all. Here is one.

Wir waren an der Jökullsárlón in Island diesen Sommer. Die Eisberge, die aus der Lagune schwimmen und in den Ozean driften, wurden zum größten Teil auf den Strand gewaschen und posierten für Bilder.  Wir haben viel zu viele Bilder gemacht und es wird nie genügend Postings geben, um sie alle zu zeigen. Hier ist eins.

clouds over Adalvík

These clouds over Adalvík in the outer Westfjords, Iceland, were worth the snap shot.

Diese Wolken über Adalvík in den äußeren Westfjorden, Island, war einen Schnappschuss wert.

flowers

There are flowers all over the place in Iceland. Here are a few samples I collected along the way. 

No flowers were harmed in the photo procedures.

Überall in Island haben wir Blumen entdeckt. Hier sind ein paar Beispiele, die ich unterwegs gesammelt habe. 

Bei dieser Unternehmung wurden keine Blumen verletzt.

 

pink spill

Lately I showed you the photo I entered into the contest about dominant color. You remember the pink nail polish?

In the same session I also took this shot!

Neulich habe ich Euch mein Contest Bild zum Thema dominante Farbe gezeigt. Erinnert Ihr Euch an den pinken Nagellack?

In der selben Session habe ich auch dieses Bild gemacht.