Surprise! Its me, back from the blogging graveyard as a new, and improved writing zombie! Sorry blog, I may have neglected you for the past couple months by not paying attention to you at all… but I am back and (hopefully) not disappearing into procrastion land again. Oops!
So, why am I back you say? Because I am being forced to! Whoohoo! Kidding. (but not really). So lets play a little game called where’s abbey, and why? Really big island. Sheep and Horses are the only living things that inhabit this land besides tourists and indie instagram models. Cold and wet. Waterfall motherland. Elves count as citizens. Did you get it? Im in…
Iceland! I’m actually here for school. Strange right? Im on a photography course abroad for 3 weeks, with this wonderful program called Broadreach. Eleven students and two teachers, are going around all of Iceland to take pictures of literally everything. No really, our fingers are practically glued to our sacred cameras. Every few days we have a fun new assignment, usually photos of course. For example, our last assignment we had to turn in two panoramas, two HDRs, and four long exposure photos. We then turn them in and we all then critique each others in a big group, not terrifying at all right? We also every now and then have journal assignments, a one page essay critiquing our own work, or other students work. And now this is now one of our assignments! Create a blog, (already had that down) and then create a blog post showcasing some of our photos and adventures! So here I am and lets get to it!
We all started off as complete strangers, but now were all enemies who fight to the death for the photo of the day. Just kidding, but that would be a good blog post. Were all very close now, I mean how couldn’t you become close with everyone after after being around each other 24/7. In all serious, we’re all very close friends now, and we were all so lucky to be a group together. And of course we all have this one little thing in common, our love for photography! What a coincidence.
So for one our first locations we went this national park called Þingvellir, and it’s wild. Basically the park is really famous because, One it has cool waterfalls, two its where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates split, creating this crazy scene of a huge rock wall that goes on for probably a mile or two, giving us a cool backdrop. We treaded through the sea of tourists to an adorably grand waterfall. Of course everyone with a right hand, had their phones, cameras, or go pros out, and so did we of course. I was more interested in all the different looking tourists around us, old, young, grumpy, bored, smiling for the photo kind of people. And naturally, there was one kid in a blinding red rain coat, who had to get a picture for the gram, so he decided that walking out to the slimy wet “Do not go on” rocks, would look so cool, a few girls would HAVE to slide into his DMs. But only if his poor buddy would be a good enough photographer for him with his iphone 5. So I of course, started to take photos of this kid, which ended up to be a pretty cool shot for me, resulting in this bad boy.
And if you’re reading this basic white boy, thanks for the photo, bro.
After I captured the wannabe jay alvarez, we went, snorkelling? wait that doesn’t sound right… Snorkelling in Iceland? Did they mean Deforesting? But wait, iceland already has no trees? ok I read that right, snorkelling… we went snorkelling in Iceland. They dressed us up in two heavy, thick dry suits. So basically we looked like astronauts that were disguised as fat blubbery seals. The water was 34 degrees fahrenheit, so as it was really really cold, our scuba instructors decided to put rubber bands around our neck and wrists to REALLY keep us dry. One of the rubber band dog collars almost choked our photography instructor Chris to death, thankfully he was freed of his rubber ties and was fine. But you’re probably still thinking, “why of all the cool things to do in Iceland, why would anyone go snorkelling in near freezing waters?” well this is the cool part, the snorkelling is in a trench that was created when the tectonic plates split, so basically we were swimming in between North America, and Eurasia. Now that makes a little bit more sense doesn’t it? The water was also part of a glacier, melted down over time, making it also a very large refreshment trench. It was defiantly a once in a life time experience. If you want to read more about snorkelling here, click here https://www.dive.is/dive-sites/silfra
another shot of the amazing waterfall at þingvellir.
One our next adventures was going to Thórsmörk, which is a humungous inhabited valley named after this special little norse god called, you guessed it, Thor! My one complaint about this place was that I saw neither the god Thor, or our other god Chris Hemsworth. Real bummer, especially the second one… But most of the adventure was getting to Thórsmörk. We left our trusty van “Frankie” for a monster truck bus. We set off for another hour drive passing so many water falls laying on the sides of the mountains, They’re so common here I don’t even take pictures sometimes! (gasp). The monster truck bus was throwing us around in our seats on the rocky roads to the valley of Chris Hemsworth. The driver randomly pulled over to show us a beautiful scene of a glacier at the top of one of the mountains. With our cameras in hands, we shot at the mountains for the kill. I ended up captured this photo that almost made me think I was in space, which Im pretty sure I wasn’t, unless Iceland is just really a freaky place, which it is.
Interstellar or Iceland?
It was probably two minutes after I took this picture that I got bored, and went back to my luscious monster truck bus seat to continue my nap. The dark rocks look like barnacles on the bottom of a whale belly and thats really what did it for me. Whale bellies. So we eventually made it to our “volcano huts” (aka basic wooden huts semi close to a volcano) in thorland, and had a rather fabulous time. But our journey is still ongoing, so I must say farewell. We have one more week left on our Icelandic journey, so ill let you guys know how the rest of it goes.
See you later
Absters
Absters World 