Seasons Greetings!

Capturing a Christmas tree bauble close-up

...and Happy other Solstice-Season Holidays for all you visitors around the globe!

 P.s. After everything we did get ourselves a dog (see previous post). A little puppy. His name is Baldur.We're so stoked! Pics to come!

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

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