We started my latest Iceland Photo Workshop by heading north to the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, a beautiful area that doesn’t get the big bus loads of tourists. It is well known for a cute little church in Budir that is painted black and for Kurkjufellsfoss a scenic waterfall beside the iconic Kirkjufell mountain. We were based near the little town of Grundarfjörður just across a small bay from Kirkjufell. There is an artist in town who goes by the name of Liston and I have visited him with groups several times. He can usually be found outside his studio carving stone and his artwork is all over town. He greets me with a big smile and firm hand shake and is always willing to talk with everyone. I’d love to have one of his large carvings but getting it back home would be a major event. He did offer one of our folks to come stay with her for a couple of months and carve anything she wants! In the winter when it too cold to be outside carving he is in his studio painting. I bought one of his larger acrylic paintings on paper and can’t wait to hang it.
During our two days around Snæfellsnes we journeyed to Bjarnarhöfn, home to a shark musuem but rather than go inside we photographed another black church and the beautiful country side. We also went up to the little harbor town of Stykkishólmur, which is a classic quaint Icelandic village. We made the fairly easy climb up a small mountain that has a great overview of boats in the harbor and the town built on the hills. It is a great view.
Back in Grundarfjörður we wandered out through fields to a pretty waterfalls. It was more than a mile round trip and the last section to get close to the falls was pretty tricky so only a couple of people made the final hike. On the way out an Icelandic horse wandered over to see what we were up to. Before getting too close she stopped and did some posing for all the photographers. And she was a great poser, striking the right moves with a scenic mountain behind her. When she had enough of that she came over to check the camera of one of our people. She sniffed around but didn’t lick the lens!
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We we blessed to start off my latest Iceland Photography Workshop with great weather. Nice cool summer temperatures and a summer day greeted folks to Iceland. We headed right out from the airport and were shooting old sod roofed houses in Keflavik within 20 minutes. The old houses are really cool and small. The door is less than five feet tall. When I was here in March I shot selfie on my phone in front of one and posted it on Facebook saying my hotel was smaller than I thought it would be. Way too many people thought I was serious.
The cutest thing in Iceland and some people think anyplace, are puffins. They are colorful birds about eight inches tall that have a rather sad face. They spend most of their lives at sea and only come ashore in the summer to mate and raise babies. Then they are back to the ocean, floating on the waves for nine months. I took my Iceland workshop group to a location where they nest in the cliff near a very public area.
I went to a Ft. Meyers beach for sunrise today that is more populated by wildlife than people. There are lots of better beaches for sunbathers, so the only people that come to Bunches Beach are there to either walk, look at birds or photograph birds. Today there was a large group of bird watchers carrying binoculars and scopes, wearing their bird watching clothes and their boots. Which means they were going to mess up a lot of photos.
I took my Meetup.com groups to Conowingo Dam in Darlington, MD, for a fun weekend of photographing bald eagles. The eagles gather at the dam to grab stunned fish that come through the generators. There are eagles that live in the area and many migrate south as it gets colder up north. At one point I counted 89 eagles sitting on the bank across the river and there were many more on an island and our side of the river.
As the week goes on the color gets better at my Vermont Fall Foliage Photography Workshop. We hit several of the local hotspots and found some nice color and cool scenes.
Through the years I’ve read about the great wildlife at the Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island near Fort Meyers, FL. You can drive through the refuge and go past several different habitats, but people say after a hurricane a few years ago, it isn’t the same. I’ve only been there twice in the last three years, but it is still pretty cool. I can only imagine what it must have been like before and I hope it comes back to full strength again soon.
There are these cute little owls called burrowing owls that live in Florida and other warm places. Like many species, development has encroached on their territory and their numbers have dwindled. Cape Coral boasts the largest concentration of the little critters and they are trying to protect them as much as they can, or so the say. The owls dig nests in the sandy soil and tend to return to the same place year after year. They don’t particularly like people or pets to get too close, their little heads start bobbing when they get nervous and they head back down their holes. PVC pipes have been constructed around more of the burrows, warning people to stay away. They can be found in parks, in church yards, around government buildings, in yards of homes and since owls are so smart, many are around the library. If someone wants to build on a lot that has a burrow, they can’t just fill it in, they have to get a permit first and then they can fill it in. Government encourages people to build around the burrows, but if you can’t, that’s OK, just kill them off.
I decided to host a photography workshop in Florida based around photographing birds, not because I get excited seeing birds but because I love the challenge of getting a special shot. A mug shot of a bird bores me. Seeing another photo of a bird sitting on a branch or looking around doesn’t do a thing for me. So I always strive to get something different, something that shows personality, something with composition, something that has more elements than just a bird. And I push that upon all my workshop participants.
They come to the dam because when it is generating power it sucks fish through the turbines which pulverized them or at least stuns them and thus they are easy targets for the eagles. It is such a thrill to see an eagle circling around and then diving down and grabbing a fish out of the water.
My final day in British Columbia was a special one. We took a five hour ride on the Misty Isles sailboat throughout the islands of Desolation Sound. The highlight came quickly as a humpback whale surfaced about forty feet in front of the boat. A couple of other boats were in the area and we all cut our motors to watch the magnificent beast. The large whale came up several more times and then finally took in a big gulp of air and lifted its tail out of the water. Captain Mike said when the tail comes up they are using their body weight to dive deep and you won’t see them again for a long time.
Smoke from distant forest fires created a haze in the surrounding mountains but they still were grand as they rose from the mainland. Captain Mike stopped the boat so everyone could go for a swim, it is a rare place where water is warm enough the swim while snow capped mountains loom nearby. As we were heading back, we saw a harbor seal and her pup sitting on some rocks, they were mighty cute.
That night when my sister sister suggested that we go down to the beach I didn’t anticipate that a special life-long memory was going to happen.
Tonight was the annual Halloween costume contest at 
Bald eagles have always amazed me. My first encounter was when I was 17 and visiting my sister at her British Columbia island cabin. I had taken her one-person sailboat out into a small harbor and was just floating along when an eagle swooped down and grabbed a fish from the water. I still can envision its talons flexing and then locking into the fish. It seems like it was ten feet away from me, I’m sure that is my memory glorifying the event, but I think of it often.