Jim Nix 1/6/23 Jim Nix 1/6/23

Incredible Iceland

My favorite images from Iceland 2022 - what a trip!

My favorite images from my Luminar Photo Camp trip to Iceland!

Back in November, my good friends over at Skylum included me as an instructor on their Luminar Photo Camp in Iceland. It was a week of fantastic photography and camaraderie with other photographers. We all walked away with great images and amazing memories - not to mention new friends!

Here’s a selection of my favorite images from the 2 weeks I spent over there. And while 2 weeks sounds like a lot of time - and in some ways it is - I feel like I have barely scratched the surface of taking photos of Iceland. It’s just an incredibly beautiful place and has a really strong pull for folks like me.

All of these images were captured with my Sony A7R3 and two of my favorite Sony lenses: the 16-35mm f/2.8 GM and the 14mm f/1.8 GM. These are fantastic landscape lenses and give me so much capability. And, I was using the Peak Design travel tripod too, in case you were curious. Small, light and compact - yet very sturdy. Works every time!

Jim Nix 2/23/20 Jim Nix 2/23/20

Sunrise on Diamond Beach

Sunrise on Diamond Beach in Iceland, complete with flowing water and massive chunks of glacial ice. A dream come true for sure!

Diamond Beach is the famous beach in Iceland where all these chunks of ice lay about, and photographers like myself run around taking photos and screaming with excitement. Well, ok maybe I was the only one screaming, but still. It’s exciting.

We got up early one morning to make sure we were in place for sunrise, though thankfully sunrise was around 9:30am this time of year. Regardless, I was up around 6am to get dressed and fed, and we left by 7:30am or something like that. It was maybe a 30 minute drive, and when we arrived it was still relatively dark and of course we had the beach to ourselves. The exploring began.

I wandered around, taking stock of these ice chunks and trying to find a composition that I liked. While there were a lot of chunks of ice on the beach, based on the tide it was obvious that most of them would never get touched by a wave - and let’s face it, we were all going for those cool shots of water moving around these ice chunks.

So many of us ended up photographing this same huge chunk, albeit from slightly different angles. Regardless, I was very pleased to be standing there in the first place, capturing these two photos which I consider my best from that outing. Having seen so many shots from this place in the past, it was quite literally a dream come true to be standing there taking my own.

Jim Nix 2/15/20 Jim Nix 2/15/20

A quick teaser about my Iceland trip

I’m just back from Iceland, and about to head out again on a business trip. So until I have the time to properly edit my images, I thought I would share a little summary of the trip with some iPhone images sprinkled in for illustrative purposes. It was an amazing trip and I have some fantastic images to share. Here’s a teaser!

Oh my, Iceland truly is an epic landscape photography destination!

I have spent the last ~8 days in Iceland, and it is amazing. Epic. Unreal. All those superlative descriptions work just fine. It was an incredible trip and one that I will be digesting for a long time. I walked away with a lot to think about, and I intend to share it all here once I get a chance to really absorb everything that happened. (It was all extremely positive, just in case that wasn’t clear.)

In short, I was there with my friends at Skylum Software (makers of my favorite photo-editing app, Luminar). They hosted their first ever Luminar Photo Camp, and I was lucky enough to be invited along to help with the camp as one of their staff, as well as to deliver a couple of sessions on Luminar editing to the camp attendees.

Overall, it was an amazing trip filled with incredible and iconic photo locations, and led by some amazing photographic Masters. I was honored to be there with them, hang out with them and get to know them. Heck, I even consider them friends now. I learned so much, and I am eternally grateful to Skylum Software, the Masters, and of course all the camp participants. I feel like I owe every one of them a huge THANK YOU.

Until I get the time to really cull my photos, edit the best ones and write about all the adventures, I thought I would at least put out this quick summary with some iPhone shots that I took on the trip, from various spots around the country. Consider this a teaser of sorts, a preview of coming attractions.

You can follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Flickr and/or Twitter which I will use to share these shots as they are ready. But of course there is no better place to really write about something than on a blog, and I will make sure to share my thoughts right here. By the way, feel free to join my newsletter if you would like to stay up to date on these things. The subscribe ink is in the upper right on my main blog page. I just sent one out yesterday so feel free to check that out right here.

So in no particular order, here are some quick iPhone snaps from this amazing trip - enjoy!