(Macro) Inspiration

Every writer knows those times when they feel that it's all been said before, or that someone is currently saying what they are inclined say in a well enough manner, so why be redundant? As far as our lovely Iceland is concerned, there are so many wonderful sources for current events and entertainment online (my facebook news feed alone is full-to-brim with amazing talent!) that it seems right to just let them do the talking in words and in pictures.

And after seven years and 596 posts, I sometimes wonder what compels me to keep on with this little hobby, which has become much more complex a package now that the social media tide has swept into our lives. I'm told by "experts" that to make anything of this site I'm to invite visitors to like/follow me in all sorts of different ways (see left, though I balked at creating an email list to spam you even more cleverly with, my dears.) And now the invisible pressure to do what the rest of the active universe is doing, i.e. tweeting, posting, emailing, G+-ing, and blogging has boggled this poor soul's mind.

I like to assume that you are all intelligent creatures, and that for you, like me, less is more. A few photos per post, succinct text with relevant links (though sometimes obscure if a site is really worth linking to) and a clean, uncluttered template is what I offer because it's what I look for in other websites. I've always tried to steer clear of repeating local/national news because I read most of it myself in an RSS reader or just Google 'Iceland news,' which I assume you all can/will do yourselves. Furthermore, I get that most of you won't even read this far because we live in the age of the Image. A pretty macro picture of 1cm long seashells on an Icelandic beach may make you pause for an appreciative instant before moving on to the next visual of our glorious existence here on post-millennial Earth, but you may not absorb more. I get that. It's what I often do.

So this writer is a pocket photographer with an uncanny, irrepressible urge to share with all of you. But maybe, because I'm from the pre-silicon solid-state-and-steel era, I become confounded by the myriad of mediums I am to use to communicate my simple photos and words.

Right now I am obsessed with macro shots of the delicate flora and fauna we pass by in our everyday lives, and I'm not sure that I would want to flood you with the incredibly small in every post. I do want to let you all know, though, that I have a few albums of life here in Reykjavik available for viewing via Picasa* and/or Google+, and that my soul is crafting slowly and with care my novel, which is a love letter to this island. I'll be sharing bits and vignettes in the near future. In addition, I will be posting to our facebook page though maybe sporadically for now.

 Thank you all for your patience and for your encouragement. It means a lot. Much love and grace to you all ~.~

*Here are three albums you might enjoy (please view them enlarged, starting with the first one : ) Secret Reykjavik, The Secret Life of Iceland, Ridiculously Beautiful Flowers, Iceland Poppy 

Have you tried Dynamic Viewing yet? Five new views in all. Use the blue tab at the top of the view page to check them all out : )

Lessons from a Bouquet of Beautiful Found at Bónus

  

This photo blows me away, especially since it's of a bouquet at the local Bónus discount grocery store. Should I share that information? Or should I keep the mystery alive? 

Either way, I had no idea what I was going to capture...I was looking for a good bag of carrots (locally grown = expensive & delicious) when I felt the impulse to try for some macro shots of the gaudy plastic-wrapped flower wands in the refrigerated produce section. I took this pic mostly for size reference. To me it looks like a painted still life from

We Spent an Afternoon in Secret Hvalfjörður

Lupin love to pose : )

This photo doesn't really need explanation, does it? 

If you've been visiting Iceland Eyes for a while, you'll know that I love taking intimate, macro photos of plants and flowers, and getting up close and personal with this lupin bloom paid off well.

Óðinn and I drove Hvalfjörður on our way back into town from our awesome trip to Arnarstapi and Snæfellsnes last weekend, something I don't do often enough. On the north side of the fjord we stopped at an abandoned liparite quarry and poked around  (liparít as it's known in Icelandic is actually rhyolite, the kind of rock that makes the landscape at Landmannalaugar famously colorful. For the curious, there's also a cool ghost town of the same name in the Nevada part of Death Valley.) 

The abandoned rhyolite quarry. You can see the helpful gull at the top.

Stopping at the quarry was of course my idea. 9 year old Óðinn had his nose in a Donald Duck comic, and was ready to just stay in the car until we got back into town. But I made him get out, and as soon as he realized what was on offer, he was stoked. There were two rusty yellow Caterpillars, a digger and a bulldozer, just sitting there.

A big yellow machine! 

He immediately climbed onto

Macro

Once again, the secret world of our often very barren island shows through in macro. Here, an incredibly well-designed creature, only a centimeter in size, rests on a tiny bloom. This close to the arctic, far from the giant sequoias of California and the lush tropical flora of more southerly volcanic islands (which, beneath their foliage are surprisingly similar to ours) it's small things that hint at Nature's tenacity. Sit, while here, and let your eyes begin to decipher the seemingly endless expanses of low growth that just greens the hillsides of Iceland. You'll soon discover that, almost fractally, what you see is a microcosm of diversity, though sometimes mere millimeters in size.

Moss

Retro-post from February 2010, originally titled Life: Tiny moss in macro ~.~ One of my favorite photos, from the early days of my fascination with macro.

I love how tenacious life is, especially the life we barely see here in colder climes. It's humbling to consider that something as small as this moss, just barely bigger than the snow it's holding, has the power, over time, past seasons and through sheer will of growth, to destroy all that we've constructed.

While humans scramble and fret, love and hate and build and tear down, regret and hope and try to keep faith, this plant lives. It may die in time, but will eventually emerge again in a new set of cells, driven by the same compelling desire to lift and rise and expand downwards as well as towards the sky. It clings and survives, and forces willing, thrives, a simple and beautiful symbol of eternal life.

Lava

Almost completely airborne in Heiðmörk

Our trip out to Heiðmörk and Búrfellsgjá yesterday was very hressandi in the early autumn winds and steel-colored skies. Supplied with bananas and Kókómjólk, Óðinn and I set off for the volcanic crater along a path through the 8,000 year-old lava field just east of Reykjavik. We didn't make it all the way to our end destination but had a super fun time lifting and climbing lava rocks and picking the few remaining blueberries along the path.

We stopped to eat at an overhang that was used for hundreds of years as a shelter, and which had been partially walled up long, long ago with flat stacked lava rocks sealed together over time with centuries-old moss. Banana done, I became obsessed with photographing macro shots of the lava walls in all their minute detail and spent the next twenty minutes or so noticing more and more intricacy in them, and less and less what my son was up to. When I finally gave up on trying to shoot millimeter-sized drops of water just as they were falling, I realized that Óðinn had been rearranging the ancient walls of the shelter to make a separate kitchen area for our new cave home. I stopped him just in time, before any major damage to moss and old lava walls was done. We laughed about it, and made all necessary repairs. It nearly became a true historical landmark fail!

All in all, another amazing outdoors adventure in Iceland : )

Macro-berry

First Winter Snow and How Things Will Go

When the heavy snows fell in the first week of December, they stuck a bit longer than we're used to here. Usually a pretty snowfall is rained away or melts and refreezes into grotesque and blackened shapes within a day or so.

This time it stayed and even filled out for almost a week, making Reykjavik a paradise for photographers of all shapes and sizes and abilities. Even three year olds were snapping awesome winter wonderland pics with their parent's iPhones, it seemed. #reykjaviksnow (among other keywords) became the hashtag of

News

More macro loveliness from the heart of Reykjavik, this time of a flower medley in my parent's front yard ~.~

While cruising the interwebs today I ran across a link from the Bookworm Bookshop in Beijing highlighting the City of Reykjavik's first Reading Festival in October 2012, Sleipnir and the Joy of Reading. Reykjavik is a UNESCO City of Literature, which will be no surprise to my more literary readers (góðan daginn, Professor Batty!)

In other news, I promised to keep us all informed about the winner of the competition for the redesign of Ingólfstorg. They are the ASK architectural firm, and here is their winning design. Even though some people are righteously furious over everything that smacks of change, anything is better than the bad chi feng shui state of things in that downtown square. The city of Rvk has made a recent valiant attempt to draw more summertime life there, but when I drove past yesterday evening there were exactly 8 well-known town drunks (who usually hang out at Austurvellir) taking advantage of the new lounge chairs, two bikers, and lone skater petulantly sliding a measly wooden box. I'm beginning to think ancient Indian burial ground for that particular plot of land...

So though I try my best not to sleb gawk, ok, ok, yes Tom and Katie came into Valentína's ice cream store on the last official day of their pre-divorce papers marriage.  And as it seems that the final photo of them holding hands EVER displays the very same double vanilla latte that Katie politely ordered from Kristjána (the cute girl in the headband in the back row of this photo) while bodyguards waited outside and Tom flashed her his winning grin, I thought I'd go ahead and mention it.

Speaking of visitors, I mentioned cruise ships in the last post. The following photos are from June 18th, when four huge luxury liners docked here and spewed forth 10,000 curious humans which, combined with fold arriving by air, meant the highest number of visitors Iceland has ever had in one day.

One of the ships was the Costa Pacifica, sister ship to the ill-fated Costa Concordia (this last link is to a very compelling article in Vanity Fair about her last night afloat.)

These pics are however of the German AIDAmar, a 252-meter long Sphinx-class cruise ship with 1096 cabins and adorned with a smile, unlike her pensive residents in these shots, who I'm sure were just unwinding from a long day of Golden Circling and postcard buying and such. It seems that tourism is booming here on the Lava Rock, and with more arrivals and departures from Keflavik International than ever, as well as the increase in cruise liners, it seems things won't be settling back into any kind of "isolated republic in the North Atlantic" any time soon.

Have you tried Dynamic Viewing yet? Five new views in all. Use the blue tab at the top of the view page to check them all out : )

Color

If you've been following Iceland Eyes for a while, you'll know that seeing our island macro-style is one of my passions. Here's some wonderful color to help you start your new June week

Beauty often displays in hidden places...
 

It's amazing what the inside of a classic tulip has to offer ~.~

Life

Tiny moss in macro ~.~

Pebbles

In macro, even the most mundane things in life show their true beauty. Here, a centimeter-sized stone, one of untold millions that provide softer landings in Icelandic playgrounds, does just that.

Carrots, and How to Grow Them for a Better, Sustainable Future

Locally grown carrots in Reykjavik

The thing is, Icelandic carrots like these are absolutely delicious and while munching away one is hopefully not mulling over their price per pound. Local produce is, in general, super good, especially the greenhouse stuff like tomatoes, cucumber, paprika (bell peppers,) zucchini and various lettuces. I buy local, despite the cost, almost without exception.

Oh, of course, you nod understandingly, Iceland has all that geothermal power to heat greenhouses for cheap, just the reason why Alcoa and Alcan have set up aluminum smeltering shop there. And you'd be right about the smeltering part. But please know that greenhouse farmers are not subsidized in any way or offered reduced energy rates at all, though Big Aluminum is. Though I usually don't take political sides, this is a very dear issue to me. Read this article from Saving Iceland for more info. It's two years old, but totally on topic*. Here's a more recent one by a possibly even more controversial source, but it raises some interesting topics.

Here's the deal: Iceland is on the very verge of self sustainability, of creating a green eco-culture that will provide an international model of development. This book excerpt helps to define in more scientific terms our capacity to provide nutrient-rich foods for our local population. And this article from the Guardian adds a hopeful note to the argument. And here's a post of mine with links to great articles re: this issue of our future.

Out of chaos comes order, every time, without fail. It's the nature of systems at all levels, ultra-micro to macro and beyond. We have the opportunity, we have the technology, we have the attitude to make something brilliant, innovative and of lasting global impact out of the rubble of our economy. The Heart Park is a good start: a little patch of green in the heart of the city where obsolete structures once stood. A small gesture like that gives hope in an unmeasurable way. That's our future. We tried the other way and it failed us. Now its time to return to the land that made us.

We live here, we are forged and bound together by ancestors, survivors of tremors and blasts and lingering ash clouds that suffocated the less hardy, smothered the flora and culled our numbers to the quick. We were parasites then, half-dug into the raw skin of the island, barely covered by sod roofs and what we could weave off the backs of sheep. We were destroyers, desperately hacking away at the gnarled and primitive birch forests til the fragile soils ran loosely into glacial rivers, leaving nothing behind but the stripped volcanic muscle of our mother. We fought each other and killed, bore children too weak to live another day in the hostile depleted world into which they came.

Hundreds of years ago the island split and raged, taking back her own life through destruction. Dank black clouds lay thick in the skies for months, starving so much of what fed on her, breaking down the tenuous cycle of life until a numb stillness overwhelmed the last people, until the starved cattle and sheep could no longer raise their heads in protest. The oldest groves, home to Baldur and to sacred things, were finally felled, burned, lost. The island had sundered herself, had shaken and seared and smothered the desperate, uglied population that burrowed itself like lice into her fragile moss derma.

Yet some survived, and we are the children of those people. We are cousins, we are rare, and born of destruction. We are inheritors of a memory of overwhelming sorrow dusted with hope, and the progeny of the precious moments of lust between members of a dying race. We owe great debt to those who made us in the wake of devastation, and to the land that ultimately spared out lives.**

*I do not necessarily support the overall political views of the sources I link.

**excerpt, MAR 2004