This is the time of the year when I take a break from my daily job and head somewhere cold to do a bit of landscape shooting. The current situation, however, forced me to revise my original plans - instead, I decided to take a trip back to Iceland lying deep inside my hard disk. As I went through my long forgotten files, I recalled this absolutely amazing morning I had at Vestrahorn (Stokksnes).

Vestrahorn is a 454m high mountain ridge on Stokksnes peninsula in East Iceland, about a 20 minute drive from the town of Hofn. The breathtaking beauty of the place lies in its ascents rising steep from the flat black sand beach and sea, as well as in its isolation and photogenic shape. When I saw it for the first time many years ago, I was stunned. I felt like I got very close to the way the Earth looked when it was made. The flip side of the magnificence of the place is that it attracts enormous interest from photographers and tourists. I actually did not even pull the camera out when I ventured there back in 2012; first, it was midday, second, there were plenty of people walking the sand dunes and the beach making it impossible to create anything meaningful.

I do not remember why but I could not return the next morning and then we moved on. But I kept it in my memory as one of the most staggering spots in Iceland. And I have seen plenty incredible images in the years to follow, which in fact made me avoid Stokksnes until my very recent trip last year.

*Ghostly Mountain, Camera: Nikon D850, Lens: 16-35 @ 19mm, Exposure: 4s, Aperture: f/16, ISO 64, Filter: Lee ND Soft 0.75*

I was staying overnight in Hofn en route to the north, the wind blew strongly outside, it snowed. I came there well before sunrise and was alone. The dunes looked like waves on a rough sea and the heavy snow storm washed out the mountain range so that I could only occasionally see some parts of it coming out and disappearing like ghosts. The snow was running fast on the frozen grounds, creating charming patterns that were immediately decomposed by the wind. The place felt vast, empty, naked and otherworldly.

I spent some time walking the dunes, looking for compositions and hoping that Vestrahorn will show itself. Soon enough (when the first photographers arrived), I went down onto the beach fascinated by structures of the dark circles on the white surface that the wind and snow was shaping around small leftovers of ice. With the pieces of mountains in the background, I visualised a minimalist pattern-based monochromatic design that I went after.

*Capture: Eye of the Earth, Camera: Nikon D850, Lens: 16-35 @ 16mm, Exposure: 0.6s, Aperture: f/16, ISO: 64, No filters*

I was grateful for the weather, which decluttered the scenery to its basic components - circles, lines, triangles, plenty of negative space. I have always had a passion for simple settings, geometry and almost mathematics in the landscape. It happens rarely (and it often hurts) that the weather conditions discard imperfections and distractions so that I can only work with pure essence, but this was exactly the case.

As I walked this immense space-like scene, I realized the ephemerality and volatility of time and all the elements around me (snow, sand, mist and frozen fragments of ice). The thought was to express the conflict between this and the eternity of rocks. I believed a good way to approach it would be through a central placement of the two main contrasting subjects - the circle shaped around the ice and the triangle of the most visible part of the mountain. I shot it like this knowing that it will require some warping and retouching in the post-process. For your reference, I’m attaching the raw file below.

What do you think?