Riding the Bullet - to Iceland!

[tagesk]

Originally Posted by krian

Photography is indeed a very serious hobby for me and I'm still learning how to process the pics afterwards.

In my (very!) humble opinion, you should be careful with the "vibrance" and "saturation".
This one, and this, is too much; in my amateurish opinion.

However, your photos are simply outstanding and I have added your report to the ERRI (see my signature) even though it is not finished.

[TaSK]

[Bongolia]

Fantastic pics. The atmosphere, saturation and composition are superb.

[krian]

Originally Posted by tagesk

In my (very!) humble opinion, you should be careful with the "vibrance" and "saturation".
This one, and this, is too much; in my amateurish opinion.

However, your photos are simply outstanding and I have added your report to the ERRI (see my signature) even though it is not finished.

[TaSK]

I fully agree with the second one but some (including Bernhard) like it and so I put it there. It's an result of playing around with different layers in PSCS4, just an "extreme thing", you know. Forget about it.

However thanks for the constructive comment anyway, I appreciate that.
And I hope for more of these in future!


And the adding to ERRI... wow! That's really great!!!

Karin

[krian]

Originally Posted by boboneleg

This is a fantastic ride report and your photos are trully outstanding

Are you passing through the UK when you go to Ireland?

Bob.

No, first I wanted to but now we take the ferry directly from France to Ireland. But I'm just thinking of coming to GB at April/May 2010.... but I don't know still...

[krian]

Námaskarð - well, for the both of us, THAT'S Iceland! It's a region with a lot of such hot mud pots bubbling all the time.

And the smell, the smell! Pure sulfure! Hell should smell like this.


The whole region around this stunning place is an highly active volcanic area and the mud pots are not the only thing one can visit, there is even an caldera and a region where you can walk on "nearly" fresh black and yet warm lava.

Unfortunately we came to the mud pots at 9 p.m. and it was too late to visit both, Námaskarð and Krafla - Krafla is this area with most of the fresh lava. (mind that in this case you spell the 'f' from Krafla as 'b').
We decided to have a visit at the mud pots.

The bad thing was that the weather on the next day wasn't brilliant so we decided not to ride to Krafla and so I have no recent pics for you, I'm sorry - if I had known this report would be on the ERRI I would have made it there


But now I hope you can enjoy the pics from the mud...


I don't know what they're called in English, but as you see there comes pure hot steam out of them.

Edited: Thanks to Klay I now know the English word for them... (okay, they are called similar in German...) and thanks to vidd I even know the Portugese and Spanish word for it too: fumaroles / fumarolas. That's it!




The light was great and the ground colorful




Blue and orange mud everywhere. What do you think that black motorcycle booths look like after having a walk in here?




A volcanic crater.




And suddenly: blue sky.







Different kinds of yellow, red and orange...







And now a pic from Bernhard - that's how we spent the night. With a view to the smelling mud pots.




One more story: the summer we were up there was the summer where there were some polar bears "invading" Iceland. Due to the climate change they have to leave the mainland of Greenland to go hunting on the sheets of ice, often far away from land. And sometimes they drift away with the ice and get stranded on Iceland. There were three bears I guess that they found here that summer but all of them were shot (although they made attempts to catch them and bring them back to Greenland).
However, when we arrived up there there was one still unfound and Bernhard was very, very terrified whether this bear will catch and eat us or not. So much for the "stronger sex".

[mistercindy]

Absolutely stunning. Thanks for the report.

Originally Posted by krian

There are rainbows almost daily, sometimes almost every hour. Unreal.

Maybe the most beautiful motorcycle pic on ADVrider. Beautiful.

[Cloud9]

Well Done! Your eye for the lens is excellent.

[TaZ9]

With so many other boring ride reports on this site, your stories and photos are truly AWESOME and inspiring. They are what real adventure riding is about. Keep up the good work.

Taz9

www.adventuremoto.us

[overlandr]

As many have said before, compared to the average ADV RR phtos, these are really good phtotographs and a credit to you. Someone tell Baldy! Is the that MkII 5D you have? Its sooo wet there compared to dry Australia. Many thanks - keep posting. oh and BTW, a good choice of bike to chug along with. Blubbering is not a verb but Blubber is a noun - its whale meat!!

[AdrenalineRider]

Amazing pics

[motorradrudi]

Absolutely brillant pics!

Thank you very much for sharing with us!

Best greatings from Germany
Rudi

[DoctorVenture]

Some oversaturation as others noted but really awesome pics - framing, focus plane, etc make a few of these magazine quality. You're surely headed to the front page.

[krian]

Again, to all, many thanks.

I'm now trying to improve some pics... maybe I reload some of them... let's see (depends on the time I have here before leaving for Ireland next Sunday).


So, you deserve more pics.


Okay, the following photos were taken on our way from this mud pots to the Western Fjords. We had a small stop-over in a town called Akureyri which is the biggest town in northern Iceland with about 17.000 inhabitants. Yes, you read right. It even has its own University.

It's a nice town, sorry, "city", but again I took no pics of it. (Again: if I had know you liked the report so much....)

But we're here to visit the beautiful nature! So let's proceed to it.


That's just before Akureyri. I like these fjords!




And there's a famous waterfall around, called Góðafoss. It is said that one of the mighty Viking chiefs, Þorgeir, threw in the year 1000 some of his pagan statues into the water to attest that Iceland is no longer a pagan but a christian nation. Well, the Icelandic people are open-minded as it can be and although it was from now on an officially christian country, the pagan religion was still present for centuries and one could even say still is, there's now a little bit of an "revival" of this ancient religion.


If you know the band Sigur-Rós (if you don't know it: shame on you ) : they're even making music together with the pagan chief.


If I don't forget I tell you something about the "magical Iceland" when I post the pictures from the Western Fjords, such stories just suit better there.

That's Góðafoss (the waterfall of the gods)








Now some more pics from the north:

Just out of Akureyri.








How small this house is in front of the mountain.













And that's in Blönduós where we put up our tent at the local campingground. In this region some of the best Icelandic horses come from - maybe you know these quite little horses, but don't say "pony" to them - they (the horses and their owners) don't like that.
It is said that they are somehow linked to the Mongolian horses which are a special breed too. (I search for a pic meanwhile...).

[krian]

Originally Posted by overlandr

As many have said before, compared to the average ADV RR phtos, these are really good phtotographs and a credit to you. Someone tell Baldy! Is the that MkII 5D you have? Its sooo wet there compared to dry Australia. Many thanks - keep posting. oh and BTW, a good choice of bike to chug along with. Blubbering is not a verb but Blubber is a noun - its whale meat!!

Hihi, well, I didn't mean whale meat .

I have the old 5D. The pictures I'm showing are not the ones where it's REALLY wet because then I had no desire to take a lot of photos...

I have a friend who lived in Australia for a while, so greetings down there!

Karin

[krian]

So, this night at the campingground in Blönduós was really special. We had a clear night sky with a view to the stars. I took some pictures of our Enfields and of the surroundings when I noticed that my batteries where empty. So I have to charge them I thought and observed the area for something like a socket.

What I found was a HUGE and empty but fully heated (meaning: 25°C or so) barrack where there was even a kitchen in it and tables and chairs for maybe 100 persons.

And they had a socket. I pluged in the battery charger and went out of this very hot barrack (it was actually too hot for me, I wasn't used to that any more after riding at something around 5°C the whole days).


I once again looked to the stars and suddenly I realized that there was a green band of light on the sky. Northern Lights! Great. And no battery.

So I let the batteries charge for a while, hoping that the northern lights will last for some more time.
They did, even when they seemed to disappear more and more. Finally I managed to take some photos.


So, the pics you're going to see are not very good and the northern light... well, I hope you can recognize them... I saw better ones some years ago but I was photographing on slides at that time...


When the night comes..















And suddenly: northern lights! (Some of you might laugh because they're so little, but I was happy to see even these little ones).