Dikes

What I spend all day looking at and taking measurements on. And then hacking at madly with a rock hammer.

Iceland

Restaurant made of sod, by Snaefellsjokull.

There was a sign nearby about Jules Verne and the hole to the center of the earth, unfortunately it didn't say where the hole was located.

Snaefellsjokull and Stykkisholmur

Yesterday we took our day off and headed up to the Snaefellsnes peninsula. It was pretty kickass. We fit in a lot, visiting a few museums and touring around the peninsula. Saw some seals and tried the fermented shark, which was probably my one goal for Iceland. We tried to go up to see the Snaefellsjokull glacier, but alas, our little red Corolla wasn't up to the steep dirt roads and we didn't want to get stuck in the middle of nowhere.
In Stykkisholmur, where we spent Wednesday night, there was this awesome church up on the hill. We stopped by when we first got there and since it was closed, we decided to come back during the morning to check it out.
I visited dozens of European churches when I studied abroad and Icelandic ones are so different. The inside was very graphic and modern. Behind the altar was a very beautiful but definitely untraditional painting of Mary holding the baby Jesus and the place was lit by these two windows on either side of the altar and all of these hanging lightbulbs that were all on different lengths of pieces of wire. So simple and beautiful.

A day off???

Skagastrond

Aleece and I are finally taking a day off tomorrow and going up to Snaefellsnes peninsula to visit the Bjarnhofn shark museum (where you can taste fermented shark YESSS) and we're going to try to hike on Snaefellsjokull glacier.

Be back shortly.

Iceland: Sunsets

There have started to be sunsets here, although this is still as dark as it gets. I guess here this means that Summer is ending and that Winter is right around the corner, they kind of skip Fall here, maybe it's the lack of trees.

Our field area

The stream cut Aleece and I have been working the past week and a half



How we get up and down on the Eastern side, it's not really steep enough that you'd have to use the rope, but it helps.

Blue and white

There are always so many different types of clouds in the sky at once here, it makes the sky look like something out of a fairytale.

Jökulhlaup

A boy plays under a bridge that was destroyed by a jökulhlaup. Jökulhlaups are glacial flood bursts, often pouring out of glaciers with extraordinary force, usually destroying whatever is in their path, such as roads, bridges, and power lines.
There wasn't much in the way of people or civilization in the areas characterized by these floods and probably with good reason.

Skagastrond

The shoreline by Skagastrond. A gabbro outcrop that Sadi, the other undergraduate was mapping and studying the faults of.

Before coming to Iceland, I emailled an Icelandic photographer whose work I enjoyed to see if he had any advice on gear to bring for working in Iceland. He recommended a wide angle lens, which is way out of my budget right now, and graduated neutral density filters, which isn't. I bought two, although I'm pretty sure I was accidentally sold the same one twice and as I bought them the day I left, didn't notice until I got here.

I really like how they help bring out more accurate colors in the sky, I feel like the blues always get blown out, and I definitely used them for the picture above.

Street Art in Reykjavik

Iceland: When it's nice, it's beautiful

When it's not nice, it's cold and windy, like today.

Iceland

I’ve been in Iceland for three weeks now, and the time is going by so quickly. I’m here as a field assistant with Dr. Jeff Karson, the head of the Earth Sciences department at Syracuse University. For the past week or so, I’ve been with one of the grad students, Aleece, near Borgarnes, doing some field work on part of her Phd project. I’m working on a project mapping dikes for the next few weeks, but I’ve managed to find some time to shoot along the way.

We’re currently camping in a tent, sometimes at a campground, sometimes near a stream off the main road. It’s kind of like I’m getting paid to be a homeless vagabond. We spend from 8 to 10 hours a day at the field site, a stream cut outside of town. Currently we’re at Bifrost, a nearby university using their internet.

Iceland is really, really gorgeous. There is everything from glaciers to volcanoes to huge waterfalls, all on an island the size of Ohio. I’m posting a few photos from the trip so far, access to the internet and those crazy luxuries like electricity isn’t always easy to come by, so a lot of my photos aren’t edited yet.

a roadside stop where we got out to look at the rocks

guest houses in Vik, sometimes the clouds are ground level, it's this really strange misty rain

basaltic black sand beaches