Aurora

Our first full day of the workshop today.  We drove out of Reykjavik first thing, and travelled up to the Snaefellsnes Peninsula where we're staying for the next few nights.

We stopped off at various points along the way, taking shots of snow on the mountains, detail in ice ponds, icelandic horses, and reflections in lakes.  We found a lake that had repeatedly frozen then thawed so the surface was very uneven.  We could see the top of the volcano - that's apparently a rare event!

We arrived at the hotel late afternoon and then went out for a sunset shoot before having dinner.  After dinner we sat and looked at some pictures waiting for the clouds to clear so that we could go out an photograph the aurora. 

What we found was the opposite - it started snowing quite heavily. We went off to bed thinking that we'd not get anything but then the guides got us up at 11:30pm, and we went outside into the snow.  In between patches of cloud (it was still snowing) we got some lovely images of the Aurora.  The display is amazing - you can see (with the naked eye) what seem to be lit up clouds in the sky.  When you give it a 15 second exposure on the camera the colours come out as a strong green tint.  We spent over an hour outside and got to bed about 1am.