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

Once Upon a Trail: a winter working with the Icelandic horse

One year I was a trail guide with Íshestar, out of Hafnarfjörður.

We took tourists on 2 hour tours out to Helgafell and back. Even in weather like it is now (heavy wet snowfall, what seems like three-inch visibility) and worse (colder, windier).

In deep winter we had to saddle up the resentful horses for 9am tours, our fingers freezing with the cold metal bridles and buckles and stiff, ungiving leather. Four of us readied about 20 of them. Of course the puffed out their bellies and hunkered into

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

Kirkjufell and do Lost Phones Go Where Socks Go?

Kirkjufell on a sunny Sunday : )

I mentioned recently on my facebook page that I don't have a fancy camera, just a 14mp pink compact Lumix and my iPhone 5.

Well, the iPhone, which I'd been using more often for conveniences'-sake, has been absconded by house-elves (in Icelandic búálfar - like in that movie The Borrowers) so on our recent trip to Snæfellsnes I only had my Lumix.

I have to say, though, that after all the HDR and ultra-saturation, all the sharpen and define and added contrast available via basic photo apps these

The Kruszenshtern Barque Makes for a Scene

Enjoying the scenery at the Reykjavík harbor lighthouse.

I love the colors in this photo, taken at one of the little lighthouses that guide boats into the Reykjavík harbor. The bicycler in blue is photographing the gorgeous tall ship Krusenshtern, a four-masted barque, that sits just out of frame (but is pictured below.) 

I'll let RT tell you about how it accidentally rammed two coastguard ships while leaving this very port. I'd posted a pic of it on the Iceland Eyes facebook page the day it arrived, looking all tall and grand. In the post-crash photo below, though, it looks a bit forlorn and sorry.

The town is

A Beautiful Skyline and Baby Seals

While we are having some rough times here, with wage and labor disputes, strikes, protests, issues of the constitutionality of some government decisions, including the management and ownership of our nation's resources (Iceland Review is always a good site for current affairs news in English) there's always time to stop and enjoy a good view.

This was from atop Arnarhóll on Friday evening, at around 10:30pm. It was a day