The best camera is the one in your pocket
An Icelandic adventure with Josephine Collingwood
Talk about bucket list! I have always wanted to visit Iceland. Volcanoes, glaciers, ice and mountains; what a heady mix for a geology-loving photographer. Or am I a photography-loving geologist? It blurs sometimes. Still, in March 2024 I made it happen by carving out a week with my eldest daughter Lizzie and flew to Reykavik armed with a great deal of warm clothing and camera equipment.
We were part of a hiking group organised by Much Better Adventures, with whom we would spend the next 4 days walking and exploring just a few of Iceland’s best experiences. After that we had 3 days on our own to go further east along the south coast and choose are own itinerary.
Josephine Collingwood, the OWPG’s Membership Secretary, is a Dartmoor-based photographer, writer, and geologist. Visit her website here .
We launched straight into ice climbing on our first day, at Sólheimajökull glacier. Hiking up the glacier with crampons and ice axes took us to some deep cravasses which were perfect for a bit of a play with steel spikes. Trusting the ice to hold your weight on just 4mm of spike on either your boots or axe takes a little getting used to, but when on a top-rope, the stress subsides somewhat.
Whilst trying to photograph the crevasse and the action in a frozen environment, I found myself reaching more often than not for my iPhone, which I recently upgraded to take advantage of its latest camera technology. The speed to deploy and ability to capture high dynamic range made it quickly become my go-to camera. There. I’ve said it. I have a rather brilliant digital Nikon, with some truly excellent lenses. But when you’re out and about, sometimes, the iPhone does the job as well. Of course, it all depends on what the images are for; personal use, online content or print. There’s a place for both.
Back to the ice climbing. Great fun, with a splash of pride at how well Lizzie took to it (she’s always so inherently graceful when climbing, skiing, cycling; it’s actually rather annoying).
Day two was waterfalls and tomatoes. Skógafoss, Hvolsvöllur and Gullfoss provided spectacular ice, rock and water combinations, whilst Friðheimar greenhouse presented another world entirely; you step into a warm humid greenhouse lush with green vines bursting with cherry tomatoes. The scent was incredible, the soup even better, in the greenhouse restaurant where you can ingest all things tomato (including beer), soaked up with mountains of delicious artisan bread.
Steam is ever-present in Iceland, with vents from geothermal heating facilities and natural vents from the hot rocks deep below, there is always some moisture hanging in the air somewhere. The steam is a reminder that Iceland is actually fissure. Or rather the new land that has been spewed onto the surface of the ocean and built up to become the land of the country. It is a hot spot of thin crust at a divergent tectonic plate boundary; North America and Europe are pulling apart and when a new tear occurs, Iceland erupts with new lava flows.
A hire car and time to explore allowed us to create our own itinerary for a few days. Driving along the raised roads along the south coast was painful; incredible scenery and innumerable photographs I wanted to capture, but nowhere to stop. Laybys were minimal and frustration great. In this instance, the best camera was the eye and memory.
There is something unique about arctic landscapes. Muted monotones and unexpected blues where ice scatters the short wavelengths of blue light.
Fjallsárlón Glacial Lagoon
In contrast, the tumbled fragments of washed clear ice that get stranded on the black sand of Diamond Beach, have no blue left. They were once part of Europe’s largest glacier, but were calved in a lagoon, washed out to sea and then abandoned on a basalt sand beach. They are both sad and beguiling.
Continuing with our burgeoning love of ice, we explored the glaciers from underneath, on top and within. It was glorious exploring the ice caves, lit by iridescent blues and greens, then a huge moulin or well in the glacier. Here, we walked down a natural spiral of shimmering ice walls with bubbles containing air from thousands of years ago. Once again, the Nikon stayed warm in its bag and the waterproof iPhone proved its worth yet again.
I look at all the photographs in this piece and they are all from the small but extremely versatile camera in my pocket. My iPhone 15 Pro Max. Provided it has a tough case and lanyard, it really is an ideal camera for adventure.
Hello Josephine, thanks for the heads-up about the iphone camera. Aside from that, this piece is a very interesting read, more so because of the mother-daughter combination. Also, from someone who knows nothing about Iceland, it's very informative. Gordon
I thoroughly agree that a camera in the hand is worth two in the… well, not in the bush. On the other hand I'm not totally won over by iPhone photography. I don't feel I have the same level of control and half the time I can't see the screen well enough. But your images here speak for themselves.
I resonate too with your comment, 'In this instance, the best camera was the eye and memory.'
The case that always sticks with me was over 20 years ago on the island of Canna, somewhere above cliffs on the North coast with a terrific vista of Skye and Rum. So naturally I had a wide-angle lens on and the camera firmly fixed to the tripod when… not one but TWO sea eagles floated up on an updraft about fifteen metres away. With a 20mm lens they would have been little more than specks and I didn't think I had time to get camera off tripod and change to a long lens. I decided not to even try, just to fix the moment in memory, and just as well as two seconds later, with barely a flick of their wings, they seemed to be half way to Skye.