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Description
My first trip to the rather amazing glacier lagoon, Jokulsarlon, in 2015 did not really yield any spectacular pictures. Less than ideal light and a bit of a lack of time were to blame. However, during my recent trip in May, we were greeted with much more interesting light. For a few hours before we reached the glacier lagoon, we had been driving through some sort of mist that seemed to hug the valleys and stay relatively close to the ground. This allowed the sun to still shine through, but created this glowing hazy atmosphere that was just fantastic. Given the time of year, we were also treated to a very extended golden hour.

Some of the most fantastic shots I have seen of the glacier lagoon have been wide angle shots with chucks of ice on a beach. I didn't quite get that view, but as I was searching for compositions, I came across a few really amazing pieces of ice floating in the lagoon. Shaped a bit like mountains, and catching the light in the most amazing ways, I knew I had found my shot. I found this interesting "path" on the glacier in the background and lined it up inbetween the glacial ice to help draw attention through the image.

I went with a telephoto shot to really help emphasize the chunks of glacier floating in the lagoon. I really wanted to capture that light falling on them and the light refracting through them and to show the texture. This unfortunately created some issues with depth of field...

So, some technical info: This is a 4 shot composite image. Two images were focused in the foreground, panned left and right, and two images were focused in the background, again left and right. All compositing and blending was done completely manually by careful alignment of the images and with masks and selections I created myself. Editing was my usual blend of color, contrast, brightness adjustments/enhancements, with a bit of light painting to help emphasize the light falling on the ice and the hazy atmosphere.

Description
My first trip to the rather amazing glacier lagoon, Jokulsarlon, in 2015 did not really yield any spectacular pictures. Less than ideal light and a bit of a lack of time were to blame. However, during my recent trip in May, we were greeted with much more interesting light. For a few hours before we reached the glacier lagoon, we had been driving through some sort of mist that seemed to hug the valleys and stay relatively close to the ground. This allowed the sun to still shine through, but created this glowing hazy atmosphere that was just fantastic. Given the time of year, we were also treated to a very extended golden hour.

Some of the most fantastic shots I have seen of the glacier lagoon have been wide angle shots with chucks of ice on a beach. I didn't quite get that view, but as I was searching for compositions, I came across a few really amazing pieces of ice floating in the lagoon. Shaped a bit like mountains, and catching the light in the most amazing ways, I knew I had found my shot. I found this interesting "path" on the glacier in the background and lined it up inbetween the glacial ice to help draw attention through the image.

I went with a telephoto shot to really help emphasize the chunks of glacier floating in the lagoon. I really wanted to capture that light falling on them and the light refracting through them and to show the texture. This unfortunately created some issues with depth of field...

So, some technical info: This is a 4 shot composite image. Two images were focused in the foreground, panned left and right, and two images were focused in the background, again left and right. All compositing and blending was done completely manually by careful alignment of the images and with masks and selections I created myself. Editing was my usual blend of color, contrast, brightness adjustments/enhancements, with a bit of light painting to help emphasize the light falling on the ice and the hazy atmosphere.