The South & Snaefellsnes: Feb 7-17.
Last month, I returned from leading an amazing tour to Iceland with a fantastic group! The weather is so changeable, here, that no matter how often I visit this country, it always comes up with a few surprises and offers fresh perspectives on familiar locations.
Ordinarily, the south and the Snaefellsnes Peninsula would be covered during in two separate tours but last year I thought it would be a nice idea to combine both thereby putting all the highlights into one. Incorporating 8 hotels, it was, as you can imagine, quite a logistical challenge but all that faded away when we picked up the group and headed to our first night in the grounds of Skogafoss waterfall. With the forecast for the following days looking positive (minus degrees, sunshine and cloud), as we headed further east towards Hofn, the mood in the minibus was buoyant. The evening was to be spent shooting my favourite location (and that of many other photographers, I'm sure), Stokksnes beach overlooked by the imposing Vestrahorn Mountains. Characterised by its black dunes, expansive beach and, well, amazing scenery, it would be impossible to ever tire of this place! Having visited here on numerous occasions, rather than head down to the shore, I decided to remain close to the bus and make abstract compositions of the dunes. The light was beautiful, revealing textures and undulations.
That night's nearby hotel was chosen, specifically, incase there was any aurora action (sadly, there was none) and for a sunrise shoot the following day. Rather nice it was, too, with some lovely dawn colour.
We had a few glimpses of directional light but nothing was sustained, so I decided we cut our losses and head the short distance to a 'hidden' waterfall. A wonderful couple of hours were spent shooting scenes and close-ups of the ice.
Following lunch, it was time to introduce the group to Jokulsarlon Ice Lagoon and Diamond Beach.
There was significantly more ice this year than last with amazing icebergs and innumerable 'diamonds' on the beach. More than enough to keep the group happy and occupied until dusk. 
Equipment-wise, although I now have a mirrorless Nikon Z8, I don't as yet have a backup (soon to be remedied with a Z7) so I took along my trusty D850 (with a D610 on reserve) for one last hurrah as it'll be traded in very shortly. With it, I brought along the Samyang 14mm, 18-35 and 70-200 f/4 with a 1.4x tele-converter.
En route to Vik, we stopped off at a very impressive glacier which you could get up close and personal with. This was quite a highlight for the group and as with many of Iceland's locations, you could spend the whole day exploring.
The path was incredibly slippery (sheet ice in some places), reaffirming the importance of bringing along ice grips.
On the way back to the minibus, this little scene, below, caught my eye.
An extremely blustery Reynisfjara. 
The group photographing the stacks.
To break up the legs, we overnighted in Reykjavik giving the group a chance to wind down and explore the city for a few hours. The following morning, we made our way to the peninsula, a journey with stops taking in the region of 5 hours which incorporated a cafe which sold the most amazing array of freshly baked cakes! Had to be done! :)
We took another stop at a gift shop/fuel station. It's amazing what you can find, even in the most unlikely of places.
For the panorama, below, of an enormous lava field, five upright photos were taken and later stitched together in Lightroom.
Another lava field. They're very impressive on the peninsula, much more so than those found along the south coast.
As with the hotel near Vestrahorn, I chose to stay very close (just 7 minutes, actually) from Iceland's most famous mountain - Kirkjufell - in case we got lucky with the northern lights. And, boy, did we?! For two hours, we experienced the most incredible display. In the north, south, east, west and overhead. An enveloping scene of green (and occasionally purple) beams, streaks and flickering 'curtains'. I've been lucky enough to see more auroras than I can recount but this has to be one of the best. Truly mesmerising!
An amazing stroke of luck, that thankfully paid off. Smiles all round! 
The Samyang 14mm AF was used with various ISOs and shutter speeds. More often than not, in order to keep the shutter speed short, the aperture was kept to f/2.8 but when it was really bright, I would stop down to f/4 for increased sharpness. Lenses always perform better when stopped down as opposed to wide open. Sometimes it was 20 seconds at ISO 1600 while others would be 10 seconds at 800. It was important that I ensured the histogram was at least halfway across and that the highlights weren't clipping. Tricky to do with such a dynamic display!
Still reeling from the previous night, that morning we explored the northern aspect and made our way to our final base for two nights in the south.
I'm always on the lookout for the iconic Icelandic horses and we were very lucky to happen upon this group in wonderful white surroundings.
Bar the very first tour I led to Snaefellsnes, a mountain road cutting through the peninsula had been blocked due to heavy snow so seeing that it was open, I was very keen to take the group to a viewpoint affording fantastic views of the mountains. Unfortunately, the layby which I'd used previously hadn't been cleared so we drove on and, instead, busied ourselves with this emergency mountain hut.
The black church of Budir...
...and a more conventional take of the same church at dawn. 
I then concentrated my efforts on the scene unfolding behind us of a lava field and distant mountains gradually becoming bathed in gorgeous pink light. 
Our final evening. 
All good things, of course, must come to an end but we all returned home with some wonderful memories, new friends and cards full of (we hoped) images to be proud of! Until next year...
