Gone to See Iceland 2014 – Winter Photography Workshop. Day 7: Golden Circle.
Svartsengi geothermal power plant near the Blue Lagoon in Iceland. Image taken with a Fuji X-T1 camera and 23 mm f/1.4 lens. Between Geothermal and Hydroelectric power more electricity is generated than needed by the 340K residents of Iceland. The excess power is used by a couple of aluminum smelting plants, and more recently by bitcoin miners. I heard a report on the news that 600 computers specially configured with multiple video processors for bitcoin mining were stolen from a warehouse data center in Iceland. Need to follow where the power is being used…
Gone to See Patagonia 2015 Photography Tour with Thom Hogan. Day 13: Hotel Lago Grey to Hotel Las Torres. Torres del Paine National Park, Chile.
It was a long day. I got up early to check out dawn and sunrise before we departed Hotel Lago Grey. We got on the bus and started the drive to Hotel Las Torres. There were many stops to get panorama images — of the mountains, the lakes, the rainbows, the clouds. We stopped for a long time at Mirador Salto Grande (lookout for the grand waterfall). This has to be one of the windiest places on earth. We then hiked to Mirador Cuernos. During the hike we passed a forest of dead trees. The story behind the forest fire that killed the trees was a hiker that was trying to burn his toilet paper. As we got closer to the Cuernos del Pain (granite horns) we can across a group of Guanaco. After that we got back on the bus. We stopped for a bit at the old bridge, where our guide Rob did some wire-walking. We finally ended the day at Hotel Las Torres.
Individual images from the slide-shows can be viewed here.
Gone to See Iceland 2014 – Winter Photography Workshop. Day 6: Golden Circle.
Return from the center of the earth. Fisheye view from behind Seljalandsfoss, a waterfall in southern Iceland. HDR composite of 3 images taken with a Nikon Df camera and 16 mm f/2.8 fisheye lens (ISO 100, 16 mm, f/10) using Capture One Pro and Google HDR Efex Pro 2. For the title, I like the B&W version better than the color one. There are also too many artifacts (purple fringing) in the color version. In either case, it was a difficult shot with the wide range of light, and the constant spray of water from the waterfall. The pathway to the back of the waterfall was covered with ice, and I was glad I had crampons for my boots.