Iceland in Monochrome

The instructions for the workshop emphasized that this was a drone-focused event. The primary goal was to get us to The Spot, set loose the Flying Things, and capture Aerial Goodness. The leaders of course realized that this is Iceland after all and the odds were excellent that there would be days when the weather would ground us. In actual fact, during the workshop we had excellent weather, with dramatic skies and dry weather. We had a single day of rain, which was productively spent in the hotel working on images.

The leaders, Talor and Haldor, told us to bring a “land camera” in case we accidentally found ourselves on a scenic overlook or for the anticipated multiple days of stormy weather. We are there to shoot from the air. But bring a camera in case we cannot do that. This was freaking ICELAND. A land camera was mandatory. They did emphasise that whatever we brought should be a minimalist system— One camera body, one or two zoom lenses, no tripod, or maybe a small light tripod in case an aurora kicked off.

Naturally, this provoked some navel-gazing on my part. I have a number of cameras that would work. Given that this was a drone-focused trip, I was not tempted to bring any of the fancy cameras. Once I started considering this in earnest I found myself weighing bringing a monochrome camera instead of a color camera.

For a while now, I have been tempted to go fully monochrome on a workshop. Recent workshops have produced a lot of monochrome keepers, in some cases more so than color images. I see in monochrome now, and the monochrome cameras capture what I see with great accuracy. I was happy to face Iceland with a monochrome camera, especially when Flying Thing would be capturing plenty of color. So I chose the Leica Q3 Monochrom. This was even weirder than bringing a camera that can’t see color— The camera has a fixed 28mm lens. Normal people were bringing a Sony/Canon/Nikon with a set of useful zoom lenses. I was bringing a 28mm fixed lens point-and-shoot camera that can’t see color. I was jumping in on my monochrome workshop plan.

The camera worked beautifully on this trip. I believe I took more shots from the ground than any of the others. One lady had an IR-converted camera, and she spent a lot of time shooting the same kinds of stuff that I was shooting. But the others were mostly focused on the drone work.

Reykjavik

On trips I tend to shoot the interiors of hotels and strange city details around the hotels. These are mostly mundane boring things in color. Frequently they are weird and wonderful in black and white. Sometimes the hotels show the result of some architect going a bit nuts to make her building stand out. The Grand Hotel Reykjavik was one of the interesting ones.

After I checked in, the first thing I noticed was the elevator. The ceiling was nuts. Once I dumped the luggage in the room, I strapped the Q3M on and wandered back down to the lobby, with a quick shot of the elevator interior on the menu.

The elevator was very fast. I had to work quickly to get a shot before the doors opened to the lobby. And we stopped at floor 4 on the way down. A couple stared at me caught in photographic flagrante delicto, and decided to catch the next elevator.

After that bit of excitement, I flowed out into the lobby. It was impressive. A giant atrium with architectural doodads and artsy fartsy lighting all over the place. Perfect for monochrome.

The lobby was busy. Too much humanity for monochrome so I started exploring the nooks and crannies.

Portrait of the artist as a candelabra reflection

There was a basement kind of place below the lobby level. Halfway down the stairs an interesting interstitial space caught my eye. I channeled my inner Fan Ho and shot a picture. Nothing fancy, definitely not Henri Cartier -Bresson but I tried. Normally if there’s a human in my image I photoshop them out. So forgive me for my amateurish street photography attempt.

Smooth hotel above. Infrastructure tubes and wires just below. Interesting how this weird interface is open. A small child could disappear from Lobby Land into subterranean Tube World.

Mystery door, Vague shapes beyond. Irresistible.

Below the lobby floor there was a weird corridor. Of course I had to explore it. There was a hotel gym at the end. Ghostly figures interacting with the machines.

Random hole in the corridor wall. What is behind the glass?

The corridor was weird and interesting but I soon got bored with it. Time to go up the stairs. At the top of the first flight, there was a place to look out over the atrium.

The stairs kept going up. Eventually I landed on what appeared to be a conference kind of place with dining rooms and bars. This room had an interesting ceiling and a bunch of empty tables. There was a dormant coffee station in one corner so I borrowed a cup and saucer to attempt to manufacture foreground interest. It was dark and gloomy. My kind of place.

I amused myself by taking crappy pictures of random stuff for quite a while. Eventually I got bored with the hotel and moved outside. There was some kind of artsy fartsy compound just down the street so off I went. Shortly I arrived.

I don’t know what it was but it had lots of statues.

Eventually I tired of shooting weird statues and went off in search of Icelandic Office Buildings under heavy skies. The area did not have much. I eventually came to this building. It caught my eye because of all the cameras. Somebody is really into security.

I followed the fence of this structure and got to the road. There the fence turned into an interesting monochrome subject.

While I was absorbed in photographing the weird fence, the building behind it spawned a Security Guy who came out to see what I was up to. He was a nice guy and we ended up having a friendly chat. He was from Dublin and married an Icelandic girl. He packed up his family and moved to Iceland, which I found very brave. Apparently I satisfied him that I was not some mischief maker, so we wished each other a good day and went on our ways.

Later, Talor told me that the building was the US Embassy. That explained the cameras. For the next day or two I was worried that I would have Jason Bourne chase me down in the highlands because I ran afoul of Homeland Security. But all good. Apparently I came off as too nerdy to be a terrorist.

That was all the excitement I could handle. Next up, I would be in the Icelandic boonies with my colorblind 28mm camera. That’s another post.

Reykjavik

Iceland In Monochrome Part II

Abstracts