So welcome to Iceland. We're so excited
to be here. So we just picked up our car
from Lagoon Car Rental, which is epic
we've got a nice Land Rover. Aast time in
New Zealand we had a defender. They look
so cool, but they honestly are the most
horrible cars to drive and be in! They're
just so rattly, old and uncomfortable,
in any way possible. So we've gone for a
nice modern one this time.
So in Iceland for the next 10 days, just
exploring, so first of all we're going to do
the south coast, which is the incredible
waterfalls and all the usual kind of
touristy stuff, but then we're going to head
up to the west fjords, which is one of my
favourite locations, because like 95% of
all tourists don't go up there, cause it's
not a massive amount it's more like
these incredible fjords, and these kind
of odd little locations, which is just so
pretty, but with no one around. So it's
it's kind of a little bit more special
than those amazing waterfalls, but
crammed with people, but it's time to get
on the road!
Okay, so we landed in Iceland last night,
as you can tell I'm super excited about
that, and this morning we were able to
meet up with Gunnar, who is literally one
of my most favorite creatives on the
planet. His work,
I feel like captures the spirit of
Iceland, as well as anybody's. I mean he
captures the spirit of this place as
well as anyone captures the spirit of
anywhere! Idea's for composition, his
processing, everything is incredible. So
after we were checking out his new
studio space which is right behind us,
right here, and after that we're going to
have some lunch, and then head down to
the South Coast for the next four days. I
don't know quite what we're going to get up
to but it doesn't really matter. Just being
here is enough for me.
Hey Guys, my name is Gunnar,
I'm also known as Icelandic Explorer on
Instagram. I live in Iceland, and I do
travel and adventure photography in this
beautiful country. I work as a
professional photographer, and I do
photography for a number of companies
here in Iceland, and abroad. I love to
explore Iceland but actually I grew up
in Denmark, and I lived there for most of
my life, and three and a half years ago, I
decided to quit my corporate life, and
sell all my stuff, and moved to Iceland.
And the idea was to rediscover my
Icelandic roots, and since my parents
were Icelandic, and my entire family was
Icelandic, and I've been coming here
during summer and Christmas for most of
my life, and I always felt this deeper
inner connection with Iceland. A fun
project I'm working on right now. It's
actually opening up a studio / creative
workspace, and as you might have guessed
we're actually sitting in it right now.
So this year is going to be a
photography studio / co-working space
for people like me. So other content
creators and photographers, me and one of
my friends are doing this together, and
we'll be open to travel and adventure
photographers, writers, videographers,
bloggers, all kind of people, wanting to
come to a place and meet other inspiring
people. One of my favorite pictures is
the picture of the Hallgrímskirkja
which is a church here in Reykjavik, and
it was captured a little bit more than a
year ago during the most epic snowfall
in a hundred years in Iceland, so I woke
up and went to check out the window, and
I saw this unbelievable snowfall. I've
never seen anything like it, and already
then it was like this, much snow and it
just kept on pouring down, so I thought
what better to do than to go on and
capture some beautiful pictures, and
while I'm standing on the street, with
perfect line up for the church, this
couple just decides where they holding
hands, decide to cross the roads
and I saw that they were just about to
cross, so I just pulled up my camera and
boom, one, two, three and it's got that
photo, and it turned out to be quite a
game-changer for me, and this photo got
picked up by the local media here in
Iceland, and then it got picked up by
media in the UK, BBC, and other places and
it just started spreading out from there,
and it got featured all over the world.
It really helped me in my photography
and put my name on the map.
So we just got to Seljalandsfoss, and this is one of
the first places you will see on the
south coast of Iceland. It's a major
tourist hotspot, but you can exactly see
why it's like the Yosemite of Iceland.
It's just incredible, so we're waiting
out sunset, and at last it's cleared up,
so the water fall's directly over there,
and we're looking for really, really
beautiful shots of the sunset happening,
with the looking through the waterfalls,
and maybe some outlines of figures, and
that kind of stuff, it's a really great
location.
So having seen photos of Seljalandsfoss, I
had showed up there with one particular
shot in mind, but something else
altogether happened. We decided to wait
for the light to shift, and made a detour
to a smaller lesser known spot, and we
kind of climbed through this little cave
entrance, it was ankle deep water, and
as we, as we got inside, we
turned around, and we were greeted with
some of the most incredible light I've
ever seen. I've also never been so wet
shooting landscapes before, it made it
really hard for us to vlog in there, and
to capture such a dynamic experience on
camera, but it was also one of those
moments that we just had to experience
and actually take it in for once.