Iceland Again

Icelandic Glacier Flow by Harold Hall, used by permission

It is Monday, February 9th, 2025 and the week ahead is packed with macro photography. So much macro photography, in fact, that I will not be writing too much about it in this blog post. I will give you all the information about this week’s activities now, so that you can find the links quickly, and then I will get into what I want to tell you about. Tuesday’s Macro Talk will attempt to answer a question that I was asked at the end of last Thursday’s stream. I forget who asked the question, but it was a good one. How do we light highly reflective subjects in macro photography?

It is an excellent question with  several equally useful answers and I will attempt to answer them all by demonstrating all the techniques that I use to control reflections - as that is what lighting shiny objects is all about. Don’t miss this one, especially if you are new to close-up and macro photography. The link to the livestream is here … https://youtube.com/live/ha_uZ4Q10pU?feature=share

While I am answering questions I am going to address a request from Alison Pollack, one of the world’s leading myxomycetes photographers. Alison asked if I would break down my horizontal studio setup and I thought this might be a helpful discussion for anyone thinking about building or improving their own focus stacking rig. While I am doing this I will also walk you through the setup that I described last week for using high numerical aperture infinity conjugate microscope objectives with coaxial lighting. It is not a particularly complicated setup, but there is enough about this rig that is different to make it worthwhile to go over. The link to that Macro Talk Too livestream is here … https://youtube.com/live/HAAnRNy15fA?feature=share

For my Patreon Supporters, don’t forget we have a Pzoom meeting this Saturday from 10AM until Noon. At least part of that time will be spent answering questions and going a little deeper into the high magnification platform discussed on Thursday, along with a very detailed breakdown of every element in my high magnification stacking platform. This was something that Dianne asked me to cover during Saturday’s AfterStack (episode 16). In this section of the meeting I will show every adapter, mount, and optical component to take the guesswork out of what you need to order to assemble your own infinity corrected extreme macro platform. The invitation to this meeting is posted over on Patreon - https://patreon.com/allanwallsphotography.

Talking about AfterStack, Saturday’s live event will soon be available to watch on YouTube.

Believe it or not - this is the second Pzoom weekend of the month already, so right after our meeting wraps up on Saturday, at 12:30PM central to be precise, we have another episode of “Tangent” with Larry and I. For those who are not familiar with this event, it is a monthly 3D modeling workshop designed for anyone who has found designing and printing 3D objects to be a vital part of DIY macro photography. I have not talked to Larry yet this week, but I am hoping to get some feedback and help with a difficult modeling challenge that I am currently working on - designing, modeling, and printing an enclosure for a Raspberry Pi camera. On the surface this might seem like a straightforward process, though it is anything but! This is because the model needs to accommodate a battery pack, a Pi computer, an SSD expansion board, power management expansion board, and a touch screen monitor. Everyone is invited to attend and your invitation is here …

Allan Walls is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Tangent

Time: Feb 15, 2025 12:30 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6916802815?pwd=TS9tZi9ZL1NXeVUvOUF4eTg5YjdlZz09&omn=81307174564

Meeting ID: 691 680 2815

Passcode: 678122

Stop staring!

We have a very busy week ahead and it is packed with information that should be helpful for anyone interested in extreme macro photography. Because of that, I do not feel at all guilty about straying into an altogether different genre of the photographic arts. I want to spend the rest of this post talking about one island, two photographers, and some of nature’s most arresting beauty.

HALL, COULET, & ICELAND’S GLACIAL FLOW

So this story starts with a conversation I had with my good friend Harold Hall. We were just getting caught up after Harold returned from one of his overseas adventures when he brought up this photograph on his computer, and asked me if I knew what I was looking at.

an image of Glacier Flow by Harold Hall, used by permission

Of course, having just returned from the same place that Harold had been when the image was captured, I should have known exactly what it was. I did not. So, like any good macro photographer I started guessing, and with every guess I got further and further from the correct answer. Now, in fairness (to myself), I will remind you that I am a macro photographer, with a primary interest in insect photography. This is relevant because while I was in Iceland long enough to witness the phenomenon that Harold was showing me, I had absolutely no intention of setting foot in nature when the temperature was hovering close to absolute zero. I had already made this almost fatal mistake, leaving the warmth of my vehicle to get a closer look at a bubbling, mud-filled and foul smelling hole in the ground. Our guide, despite having an almost total disregard for the comfort of his charges, did have a sense of humor. This was fully on display when he called this gaseous atrocity a geyser.

old faithful - not

Harold is clearly made of stronger stuff than am I, so he got to see this remarkable display of natural beauty, while hanging out of the side of an airplane. So what exactly are we looking at here? What are these silky braids visible from high above? We are looking at the runoff from a melting glacier, glacial flow, hundreds of braided rivulets of water so filled with silt and chemicals that it takes on these subtle blues and the earthy tones of sand, sienna, sepia, and chocolate. Knowing this is what I am looking at does not help me to understand the dynamics of the scene. Streams do not typically cross one another as these appear to be doing, nor do they usually split off from a larger flow to  wriggle snake-like in search of their own route to the frigid waters of the North Atlantic. Even armed with the knowledge that this is flowing glacial runoff, I still find its disregard for fluid dynamics baffling - and beguiling.

Glacial flow by harold hall, used by permission

I love what Harold has done, capturing the essence of this stunning display of strange beauty. By lucky coincidence, Harold published these pictures in an excellent article that he released the day before I started to write this piece and I would recommend that you take a few minutes to visit his travel and photography blog. Follow this link to his article, https://www.haroldhallphotography.com/ and while you are there, I encourage you to look around and take in some of this remarkable artist’s work. Harold is one of the most gifted photographers that I know and his treatment of this curious aspect of Icelandic vulcanology is a superb example of the man’s gift.  I consider it a great honor to have Harold as one of my long-time supporters and, if he is able too attend our Patreon event this coming weekend, I daresay he will be willing to share with us a little more about his visit to this strange and wonderful island.

Iceland’s version of a “beach”

And then, a couple of days ago, I got a call from a good friend, we will call him William (because that is his name), who wanted me to drop by his office. His office is just a short distance from my studio and I was eager for a short break after my livestream, which had just finished. Arriving in the offices of Sun Chasers, a solar energy company here in Peoria, I was delighted to find another friend of mine already there. Natasha is an artist, dancer, musician, intellectual, and photographer, who also just happens to be married to William, making them one of the most interesting and entertaining couples I have ever met. The office was beautifully appointed and several of the most striking pieces of art on display were the work of Natasha herself. As I was admiring one of her beautiful seascapes, Natasha brought up an image on her laptop and, turning the screen to face me, she asked if I knew what was shown in the photograph. Without a moment’s hesitation I replied, “Of course! This is an aerial view of the glacial flow, possibly from below the Vatnajökull glacier.”, pronouncing the name of the glacier as only an intrepid explorer of ice fields, or a person with a severe sinus infection, could do.

Thanks to this unlikely coincidence, Natasha was now convinced beyond a doubt that I was both sufficiently knowledgable about, and deeply in love with this frigid chunk of North Atlantic basalt to be worthy of an introduction to a second glacial flow photographer in the same week. And so it was that I came to meet Gabriel Coulet and learn of the beautiful and important work that he has been doing on this frigid Scandinavian outpost, halfway between his homes in Chamonix, France, and Quebec, Canada. Gabriel “Gaby” Coulet is a former downhill ski racer, adventurer, businessman and acclaimed freelance photographer. His studio is called “Third Eye Line” - and his landscape photography is absolutely stunning. But you certainly won’t need me to tell you that. After looking through his remarkable portfolio, I decided that his work deserved to be seen, and that his Icelandic “then and now” project would complement Mr. Hall’s excellent article. To that end I had planned to include a few of Gaby’s images in this piece. Alas, my request for permission to use the images has yet to be answered, and as I would not feel comfortable doing so without the photographer’s express permission, I cannot. What I can do is urge you to visit his website, https://thirdeyeline.myportfolio.com and take in the images presented in the section called “Thule” (a translation is available and can be accessed by clicking on the translation icon in the URL at the top of the page). As Natasha explained to me, the project began when Gabriel came across some old photographs of the unspoiled island taken by another photographer, 61 years ago, in 1962. Concerned about the dramatic changes in the landscape in recent years, Gaby felt a responsibility to chronicle these changes by completing the monumental task of finding and photographing each of these vistas, exactly as they were photographed all those years ago.

Iceland is a small island, compared to, say, Australia, but it is not that small. The nation is almost 40,000 square miles, almost exactly the same size as Kentucky, or Virginia. Finding the exact location and vantage point for every photograph in the earlier collection of images, many of which could not be classified as iconic landscapes, and would likely be unrecognizable by most landscape photographers, must have been a daunting prospect. The essay and images titled “Thule” (a mysterious island at farthest northern limits of Ancient Greek exploration, and today thought to be Iceland) make a beautiful and poignant piece of work that I found fascinating and moving. I urge you to visit Gabriel’s site and, for a while, lose yourself in the powerful telling of this story. If I am able to obtain the author’s permission, I will share some of these images in future articles, but for now visit his website directly - you will be glad that you did.

My thanks to Harold Hall and Gabriel Coulet for allowing me to share their inspiring work. And to you, for tolerating my digression.

See you on Tuesday!

Allan