Iceland review - 2013, Side 6

4 ICELAND REVIEW
One-hundred-and-twenty-fifth of a sec-
ond is the shutter speed I most often
use when I capture Iceland. My fa-
vorite lenses are 50mm on Hasselblad V and 35mm on
FF. Both lenses give the right perspective of Iceland.
But the right image? After more than 30 years of
traversing Iceland with my cameras, I know less and
less about what makes a good image. Or how to take
the perfect picture. I only know when I see one.
When I started out as a photographer, here at Iceland
Review in 1982, it took me three weeks to get my Ko-
dachrome 25 films back from processing in Stockholm.
It all changed ten years later when Fujichrome Velvia
50 arrived; you could process the films here in Iceland
and get them back the same day. That was a revolution,
plus the films were 100 percent faster, ISO 50.
Today, we see the image instantly on the back of our
cameras, or on the front of our phones.
Does it make us better photographers if we can de-
lete all the imperfect images?
No. It’s not the camera that takes pictures, it’s the eye.
And my eye, or brain, can only work with fixed/
prime lenses, zoom is not for me. Period.
Not even in the northernmost part of the Republic,
the island of Grímsey, which we visited for this issue, or
the country’s southernmost part, the archipelago of
Vestmannaeyjar, where the locals recently celebrated
the 40th anniversary of the end of the Eldfell volcanic
eruption, one of the biggest in the last century.
I don’t even zoom when I’m focusing on the flower
power of Iceland.
Frozen in one-hundred-and-twenty-fifth of a sec-
ond.
In the days of Iceland’s first photographer Sigfús Ey-
mundsson, to freeze a moment took minutes, not a
fraction of a second.
His timeless images of Iceland, taken 125 years ago,
are indeed frozen in time.
Páll Stefánsson
ps@icelandreview.com
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publisher Benedikt Jóhannesson
Head office
Heimur hf.
Borgartún 23, 105 Reykjavík, Iceland
Tel: (+354) 512 7575
icelandreview@icelandreview.com
Printed in Iceland by Oddi
Fr
om
th
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dit
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EDITOR
Páll Stefánsson
DEPUTY AND
fEATUREs EDITORs
Ásta Andrésdóttir (on leave)
Eygló Svala Arnarsdóttir
DEsIGN
Erlingur Páll Ingvarsson
CONTRIBUTING
WRITERs
Guðni Th. Jóhannesson
Júlíana Björnsdóttir
Lowana Veal
Zoë Robert
CONTRIBUTING
PhOTOGRAPhERs
Áslaug Snorradóttir
Geir Ólafsson
Hörður Sveinsson
Páll Kjartansson
Sigfús Eymundsson
Sigurgeir Jónasson
Ægir Freyr

WEB EDITOR
Zoë Robert
COPY EDITORs
Julie Ingham
Zoë Robert
PRODUCTION
Erlingur Páll Ingvarsson
COLOR PRODUCTION
Páll Kjartansson
ADVERTIsING sALEs
Helga Möller
Sunna Mist SigurðardóttirAdvertising Sales helga@heimur.is
For daily news from Iceland:
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