The Story Behind the Photo

Golden Hour

by David L. Godwin

The image was captured during a 12-day photo workshop to Iceland during the summer of 2015. The workshop was led by famous outdoor photographer Joseph Rossbach and we spent the entire time chasing light around the southern portion of Iceland.

The workshop was held during the early summer months and the workshop was blessed with extremely long sunrises and sunsets. Iceland is located very far north and close to the arctic circle and so our sunsets would begin around 10 pm in the evening and last until 2 am in the morning. During the nighttime hours the sun would just dip down below the horizon before completely rising a few hours later. Because of the combination of geographic location of Iceland being very far north and the position of the setting sun you have sunsets that last 3 to 4 hours passing through long periods of golden light.

The equipment I used for the entire trip included:

Camera: Canon 5D mark iii

Lenses: Canon 16 by 35 mm/ f 2.8

Canon 20 by 70 mm/ f 2.8

Canon 70 by 200 mm/f 2.8

Almost everything was shot on tripod

Filters: Circular polarizer

Graduated neutral density

This particular image was shot at Kirkjufellsfoss (the iconic triple waterfall) along the western edge of the Snaefellsnes Peninsula.

The camera settings for the selected image were:

Lens 16 to 35 mm set to focal length of 22

ISO – 100 and f stop of f/20 and shutter speed of ¼ second (hence needing a tripod)

Photographing the mountains and waterfalls in this area was one of the highlights of the trip. In this particular image I was drawn to the flowing water in the foreground and the iconic mountain in the background. The particular evening this image was shot had almost perfect conditions with golden lighting lasting for several hours. The golden hour lighting created great images filled with wonderful color and great texture in the mountain, streams, grasslands and waterfalls.

The image was processed for the most part in Lightroom and using some of the NIK software tools. The overall goal of the post processing was to balance the light and color saturation to create an image full of texture and flowing elements.

During the midnight sun season Iceland is a treasure to photograph and that experience belongs on every photographers’ bucket list. Here is a list of things I try to remember from this trip.

Scout out the area before your shoot. Look for new or different image perspectives to capture.
Understand the lighting conditions and how they will change over the course of the shoot.
Use your tripod as often as possible to capture correctly exposed images during the reduced light of sunset, golden hour and sunrise
Take lots of bracketed exposure shots to insure you capture the full dynamic range of some of these dramatic scenes.
Don’t forget to use both the circular polarizer and graduated neutral density lenses to help balance the image exposure.