I had never really given much thought to visiting Iceland. But a close friend of mine wanted to go and I managed to find the money somehow (you can’t take it with you right?); so we booked a tour. I’ve never been a fan of tours but it seemed like a good idea to let someone else do the driving, hotel arrangements, and planning for a change. We booked dates in January because one of our bucket list items was to hopefully see and photograph the Northern Lights (the Aurora Borealis) and those long winter nights give you the best chance. This has been a huge dream of mine because my Father named me after them…. My middle name is Aurora. He wanted that as my first name, but my Mom voted against that, haha.
If you don’t know much about Iceland; the country is beautiful - with volcanoes, geysers, hot springs, lava fields, black sand beaches with dangerous rogue waves, colossal waterfalls, and even a beach with huge chunks of ice that sparkle in sun… if you have sun, that is. Our weather ran the gamut from moderate temperatures with sunshine to crazy wind and rain. The trip was an adventure for sure! Spent some time in the luxurious Blue Lagoon, visited Thingvellir where the North American and European tectonic plates meet (remember that from geography class?) and braved the night cold outside waiting to see some Northern Lights – none. Our little group saw the Strokkur geyser and other thermal activity, in the rain, and went outside at night to look for the Northern Lights – none. We photographed some spectacular waterfalls; Gullfoss, Seljalandsfoss, and Skogafoss and got windblown, cold and damp in the process, and went out at night to look for the Northern Lights – none.
Yes we saw amazing sights and the Icelandic people were very generous and kind everywhere we went; but…but… I had come all this way and spent all this money hoping to photograph the Northern Lights! After all, Iceland is one of the best places to see them, and we were down to the end of our tour and the cloud cover each night had been too thick to see anything. We planned for an additional two days after our tour to explore Reykjavik (Capital of Iceland) on our own and as we were checking back into our hotel that afternoon what did we see but a sign saying, ‘100% chance of Northern Lights tonight’! My friend and I could barely get the words out quick enough to the desk clerk – HOW DO WE BOOK SOMETHING and WITH WHOM and WHO WAS THE BEST? And PLEASE DON’T TELL US IT IS SOLD OUT! We had ONE night! So, around 10:30pm we piled on all the clothes we had – because it was really, really, cold and windy – brought all the camera batteries we had, and piled into a luxury van for 6 and headed out of town.
Well, as you can see, the Aurora Borealis put on quite a show that night. Dancing across the sky in brilliant shades of green so intense it lite up the ground. It was fantastic! It was so windy that anything that was not tied down got blown away. We only extended our tripods to their lowest height and literally laid our bodies across them to keep them from tipping over in the wind. My sock hat kept threatening to blow away, my gloves were clipped to the cuff of my coat sleeve, our knees were burning from crawling around on the rocky ground as we hunkered down on the downwind side of the van. Everyone else was content to watch the show from inside the van. Not us, not the two determined and mildly insane photographers! For 40 minutes or so we photographed the magnificent display put on by the heavens. We were only torn away from our task when the van driver threatened to leave us there, haha. The next morning we found out that it was one of the best Northern Light events in many years.
What an adventure! Bring this into your home and you’ll enjoy a reminder of the spectacular show the sky can provide as the result of interactions between the Sun and Earth’s outer atmosphere… and the two slightly insane women photographers that went out to photograph it.
