Alaska

This August a couple friends and I came across a super cheap flight from LA to Anchorage for only $300 [thank you Alaska Air!], so we jumped on it that night.  Granted this meant we got into the Anchorage airport at 1am and then had to sleep on exceptionally cold benches till 6am when the car rental place opened, but it would totally be worth it right?

After a really cold cold night sleeping in the airport with probably a good 30 other people who had the same idea we got our car we headed off to Seward, a southernly coastal town and the gateway to Kenai Fjords National Park.

Since it was only 6am we got some really gorgeous morning light as we headed south winding through the mountain passes of the Turnagain Arm, a coastal fjord of sorts just south of the city.  The Turnagain Arm has some of the largest bore tides in the world and also is home to some 350 or so Beluga whales.

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2010 Iceland Ring-Road Driving Trip

The one place I wish I spent more time in was the Eastern Fjords of Iceland. It happened to be the day that I was going to pull a 6-7 hour drive [more like 9-10] north from Vik to Seyðisfjörður and I found myself stopping and running around every 2 minutes. There were a lot of dirt roads in this stretch, but nothing too bad...you just had to watch out for baby sheep.

One of my favorite fjords, good moody lighting too.

While this is a scenic spot in the Summer, I just can't imagine living here in the winter. Something tells me they can't leave their house for 10 months out of the year. Snow burial is most likely a major problem here.

Heading up into the highlands of the North I found a random abandoned nest out in the middle of a field.

The post Iceland Road Trip – Part Four appeared first on Ian Grant Photography.

2010 Iceland Ring-Road Driving Trip

The next day I really needed to take it easy [after eventful car crash/stuck in mud] so I did what any person would do. Go see icebergs! But first I had to go see some awesome waterfalls and play with my new variable ND filter [essentially lets less light in so I can take long exposures in the daylight].

This first waterfall is named Seljalandsfoss [foss being Icelandic for waterfall...you see it a lot in a country with 10,000 waterfalls]. You can actually walk behind the waterfall, but I was getting my gear soaked enough and didn't need a camera failure a couple days into the trip...

This was my favorite waterfall, and the one I was most looking forward to seeing. Its name is Skógafoss and is actually near the volcano that blew up recently. There was tons of ash in the area which then covered me and everything I owned. Thankfully this place was unbelievable and made the two hours of coughing and sneezing worthwhile. I was actually perched up on a swan dive on either side ledge for the bottom photo. It was muddy, slippery, and home to angry mating birds too.

This is the coastline of the town Vik. I stayed in the hostel there for a few days and it was pretty cozy. They happen to live underneath the Katla volcano, which is bad news for them the next time it goes off [any day now]. A lot of the volcanoes are under glaciers, so an eruption means flood death for anyone who can't get out fast enough. There's an evacuation route in place for everyone in town to be able to get out within 3 hours of an eruption. This is 2 hours and 50 minutes too slow.

This iceberg land is one of Iceland's prized treasures called Jökulsárlón. Most of the names I'm throwing out are really easy ones, I'm trying not to do the long strange character drawn out ones. Anyway, on the way to Jökulsárlón my car decided it was going to stall while getting gas, so I had to drive all the way up from Vik without stopping as if I broke down on the way the likelihood of me camping in my car in that spot for a few days was pretty good. I only had Ritz crackers and Ramen which wasn't really going to get me that far in that lava land desert [see photos from part one]. I came back on the same route the next day, so you'll see those amazing glacier photos in the next part.

The icebergs come from the glacier Vatnajökull [kull being glacier] which is the largest glacier in Iceland and takes up 8% of the country. It's also considered the largest icecap in Europe and home to many a volcano waiting to explode, naturally. It's really a sight to be seen. Here are some of my favorite photos- I seriously had to cut out a lot.

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2010 Iceland Ring-Road Driving Trip

This June I found myself having a nice little window of time where I could get away and after reviewing my 'places I want to go' list from every year, Iceland kept being on the top of the list. The two days of decent prices to go over there just happened to work as well, so two weeks ahead of time I got tickets from Los Angeles to Reykjavík on Iceland Air.  Sweet!

First things first, though I saved some money on airfare [It cost around $800 vs. similar dates being $1800] renting a car for a week wasn't cheap.  Though I understood later that it is impossible to not trash your car in Iceland hence the cost, the fact that the cheapest car to rent was $600 for a week seemed absurd.  I had read that getting a 4x4 was a smart move, but dropping close to $1k for a week rental was out of the question.

So after arriving at 7am I figured I'd head off to the world famous Blue Lagoon.  More people come here each year than residents in Iceland.  Sadly it was freezing out and insanely windy.  Not the most exciting time to be throwing your clothes off and jumping in 100 degree water.  I got some photos though.

From there, I decided to do Iceland's 'Golden Road' or whatever they call it. Essentially most people that go to Iceland just stay in the city, but this is a somewhat local excursion to see the sights. Since I hadn't slept in probably 30 hours, I thought- why not? It was my first real experience with some good dirt roads too. My car seemed to hold up pretty well all things considering. Not having a GPS was kind of a bummer, TomTom doesn't make Iceland maps yet.

Gullfoss Waterfall was really great, but unbelievably windy. I almost fell off the side there. A hint of what was to come for the entire trip. Seriously.

The remnants from the Eyjafjallajökull volcanic eruption were still obvious, the amount of dirt and junk in the air was insane. My allergies were out of control! In certain areas I would step on the grass and a little poof would come up on every step. The first night I spent in Selfoss a renegade ash cloud decided to hang out over the town [it was like a huge downpour storm cloud!] and I came out to a car full of caked on gunk.  Volcanic ash isn't good to breathe in either, it's full of glass and all sorts of lung/airplane shutting down goodness.

I hung out with these horses for a little while and fed them grass. If you look down in the background, that's where I got my car stuck pretty much far enough away for no one to notice I was missing. One of those moments in your life where you're like 'wow, what was I thinking?'. Thankfully some family just happened to find me after I tried digging out for 45 minutes and they couldn't help, but found some weathered Icelandic farmers to come drag my beat up car out. Aye...

The main road around Iceland is called the 'Ring Road' or Hwy 1.  It really gives you a great mostly coastal view of Iceland.  Some stretches were downright scary though.  This is a very volcanic area down in south-central Iceland near Vik.  There were times where I wouldn't see another car for a good 45 minutes.  Also most of the roads in Iceland were elevated with no shoulder, so the slightest miscalculation and you were rolling down a ditch...for nobody to find you.  Ever.   Icelandic driving was white knuckle all the way.

The post Iceland Road Trip - Part One appeared first on Ian Grant Photography.

So it looks like I'm going to have a couple weeks in-between weddings, so I did what any normal person would do and booked a ticket to Iceland.  In a week-and-a-half. It's going to be awesome and I'm going to drive the ring road [the link takes you to a great NY Times article] and basically run around and do Ian approved things for a week.  Right now it's daylight about 20-22 hours a day since it's so high up around the arctic circle.  Tanya isn't coming this time though, she has to do normal people things.  I'll post more info soon, but I'm off next Thursday!

UPDATE:

Check out the entries from my two Iceland adventures!

June 2010 Iceland Ring-Road Driving Trip [ 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 ]

September 2011 Iceland Ring-Road Driving Trip [ 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 ]

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For a small sampling of previous 'death-trips' as we call them please see:
• 2007: The Channel Island Deathtrip
• 2007: The Petrified Desert Deathtrip [camera-phone updates]
• 2008: The Oregone Deathtrip [also camera-phone updates]

We're probably going to be on the road and posting from roughly 2am'ish Friday - 3pm Sunday.

The post 2009 Roadtrip Title: The Sea of Death Tour appeared first on Ian Grant Photography.

So with that said, I present to you this year's 2008 photos of the year [by me]:

The post 2008 Landscape Photos of the Year! appeared first on Ian Grant Photography.

A fun project I've had on the back burner for a little bit is my iNationalPark.com website. It's a website where people looking to purchase National Park fine-art images can go and get gorgeous 16x20 photography for their empty walls and help *cough* fund my lifelong project...visiting National Parks!

One of my favorite things [and much to Tanya's dismay] is traveling out to the middle of nowhere and visiting National Parks. I actually buy a lot of plane tickets with the idea of visiting National Parks in the immediate area...one of the main reasons why I'm flying to Salt Lake City in a few weeks. So with that it's become my lifelong goal of visiting all the National Parks in the US- I think I've visited roughly 20-25 so far. The next ones I'm visiting are Arches and Canyonlands. After that I'm thinking about returning to Death Valley possibly in January and Great Basin in the spring.

I also want to thank Kiel Couch for recently purchasing an excellent copy of Trees in Fog, Redwoods National Park. You're going to love it!

The post iNationalPark.com: Fine-Art National Park Photographs appeared first on Ian Grant Photography.

My good friend Valeri alerted me to a crazy deal Southwest Airlines is having, where you can fly to Salt Lake City for 50% off! In the past I've wanted to fly into SLC because there are a number of National Parks in that neck of the woods that I haven't visited yet and have wanted to. All the previous flights I've seen from LA have been up around $300. Now, we're going to go visit the weekend of Dec. 12th for the grand total of $133 round trip! What a sweet deal! This has actually turned out to be a great year for travelings even though I took a year off from going over to Europe- I should hopefully have my new Canon 5D Mark II by then and will be able to really give it a good trial run!

The post We're Going to Salt Lake City [or Utah at least] appeared first on Ian Grant Photography.