Stokksnes — CESAR MENDEZ | WORLD TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHY

It is 1 o’clock in the morning and I was 5 km from Höfn, I stopped at a gas station to think about my plan. Should I go to Höfn campsite and wait for sunrise? Or, should I go to Stokksnes and wait there directly? As this was my first trip to Iceland I didn’t know what to expect, reading some reviews on the internet days before, I found that Stokksnes was private land, that you need to pay a fee for entering, so, because of this I decided to go rest a bit at Höfn campsite instead.

I decided not to sleep but to prepare all my gear, I cleaned the camera body, lenses and filters, cleared the memory cards and charge batteries. I tried to clean my tripod’s ball head, it wasn’t working properly thanks to the black sand from the days before at Vik and Diamond Beach but no success, I needed a special screwdriver to open it and clean the locking and release mechanism.

After a while I look outside, and I see the sky is getting brighter, but it was only 2 o’clock in the morning. Immediately I opened the Photo Pills app to double check what time was sunrise, the day before at Vik sunrise was around 3:40 am, and I was just about 200 km from Vik. I learned that night that thanks to Iceland’s geographical position the sunrise and sunset time changes drastically at a small distance; so, instead of 3:40 am sunrise was going to happened at 2:30 am. Once I realize it I rushed quickly to the driver’s seat and drove directly to Stokksnes.

To get there you must drive a small dirt road, it is well maintained, but you must keep your speed down for safety and to avoid the gravel damaging your vehicle.

The land owner has a small café called Viking Café, once you spotted you know you arrived. I park the van and grabbed my gear. Prior to my visit to Stokksnes I researched about the place, so I learned about the fee and went looking for the automatic cashier where you need to pay. Is not super obvious, if I didn’t know that I must pay maybe I wouldn’t have spotted the machine and just walk all the way to the lighthouse.

After the payment I saw that there was a road leading to the lighthouse, there was an automatic barrier and a sensor to scan the ticket of your payment, I tried to pass it, but the barrier wouldn’t open, after a couple of tries I gave up, parked again and started walking.

The place was huge and all for me once again. The sun was already coming up and even if there was a heavy cover of clouds they were moving fast, it looked spectacular. I was in a rush, I was late because of the sunrise time changing. I started running towards the beach, but I had 15 kilos of gear hanging from my back, plus no rest from the day before, it took me some time to reach the beach.

Before arriving to the beach there were beautiful black dunes, lucky for me, because there was no one else in Stokksnes the sand was clean and pristine, not a single footprint but the ones I was leaving behind. I had to be very careful not to ruin my own compositions, the trick is to start shooting from the distance towards Vestrahorn, in this way your tracks are always going to be behind you and not ruining your shot.

This black sand dunes were 2 meters high at least, not having a person on frame it lacks sense of perspective.

As I was walking through the dunes, the weather came in and the strong gusts of winds were hitting me directly, I was trapped between the dunes that were acting as corridors for the winds increasing the speed, like a canyon would. I couldn’t open my eyes, I was practically blind, I grabbed my gear and started running back away from the dunes; the sensation of being trapped and some anxiety got over me as I was walking out. Once I got out I stopped for a moment and decided to think what to do, I was exhausted form the day before, and the lack of sleep wasn´t helping.

After some thoughts I decided to go straight to beach, if the winds got calmer I would come back again for the dunes.

On the beach I was safe and sound from the sandstorm. The footprint technique applies the same way as in the sand dunes, so I started walking from the distance along the coast towards Vestrahorn. The place was stunning with the majestic Vestrahorn on the background and the sun was rising behind it. The beach was flat and long, and the waves were gentle. I started to shoot some horizontal compositions, trying to get some reflections out of the wet sand when the waves pull back to the sea. Then I switched to vertical, for this scene I found it more pleasing, instead of trying to frame the complete landscape, I decided to frame some closeups. In this case I positioned my camera low to increase the size and impact of the foreground which was the sand and the waves coming in. I snapped some shots until I got an “s” curve that I liked. The “s” curve leads the eye towards Vestrahorn as middle ground and the sunrise sky on the background.

After the beach, the winds were still strong, and I saw angry clouds pouring rain in the distance coming towards me. My levels of energy were super low, and I was sure that I didn’t want to get wet being this far from the van. I would have liked to stay much longer but the conditions were tough, and I needed some rest.

As I was walking back to the van, some golden light peaked behind Vestrahorn, so I stopped to capture the light. I waited for a moment to see if the light manages to kiss the tip of Vestrahorn, but the clouds covered the mountain, so I decided to move on.

A small hope of seeing light spilling in Vestrahorn, but it didn't´t happen

Back in the van I drove towards camp to have some rest, I slept until 10:30 am.

Once with mind and body rested, I had to make a choice, I knew that I wanted to explore Snaefellsnes peninsula, and from here it was the same distance to go around northern Iceland or to go back where I came from, should I continue around the ring road and make Dettifoss my next stop? Or, should I go back the south coast and try to improve some of my shots?

After a lot of thought I took the decision to go back along the south coast, it was a tough decision as I was really wanting to see Dettifoss, Godafoss, and maybe Aldeyarfoss; but also, I knew that I didn’t like much my photos from the Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon and that because of the weather I got practically nothing from Skógafoss. At the end the decision was made based on having a chance of improving my photographs, rather than increasing the number of places I shoot.

I drove all the way up to Seljialandsfoss because I wanted to shoot sunset while the sun hits directly the waterfall, but the clouds covered the light and so I went back to Skógafoss campsite to spend the night there. I decided to take a break of eating in the van, so I went to that Skógafoss hostel restaurant to grab a brew and something to eat.

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