On assignment in Iceland
In September last year I was lucky enough to do a collaboration with Lavacarrental in Iceland. An amazing experience, where I got to journey around the country for 10 days, photographing the most beautiful places the country has to offer. In this post I will talk about what it is like to be on a photography assignment, like this one.
Being on a photography assignment is amazing. I really love it. Simply being in a beautiful location with the only aim of photographing it, and creating some amazing content. Iceland was no different. Over the course of 10 days, I drove around in a campervan, camped at night and photographed during the day. On assignments like this there is in most cases a number of photos that have to be delivered to the client. I also offered Instagram stories and posts. When I do an assignment like this, I often know what I want to create, before I’m actually on location. However Iceland made that difficult for me. Very difficult. Visiting just in the end of summer, it was raining every single day, right until the day I left, where the sun came out. I have never experienced weather as bad on a photography trip, as on this one. And that made my job difficult as I had planned specific locations based on drone photography, which didn’t happen. It made my job a whole lot more difficult, but also the challenge even more interesting.
I had to decide whether to sit and wait around for the locations I had in mind to clear up, or move on. The weather forecast told me that the weather would continue in the area, so I decided to move on.
In situations like this, I always try to remember why I’m in the location I am in the first place. Of course my goal is always to provide the best possible photos. That is always the case. But in this case, I wouldn’t risk being stuck in the same location for 4-5 days, when there were plenty of other amazing locations in the country.
Moving on, I found myself facing a new challenge. As weather kept turning even worse, at least so it seemed, I needed to forget about the drone photos, and start focusing more on simply using my camera. In cases like this, photographing cars, I prefer to use the drone, as it includes more of the landscape, whereas I use my camera to focus more on the details.
The goal in Iceland was to show the car in the beautiful surroundings.
On assignments like this, I always keep the purpose of the agreement in mind. When I’m not creating, it is always in the back of my head, that I have to take the photos. I’m constantly on the lookout for locations in which to photograph.
In this case, as the weather was so bad, I actually think that it made for some very interesting photos. Due to bad weather, I wasn’t able to photograph the car in all the normal tourist locations. Instead I had to opt for places that I had never seen before.
And that’s the difficult thing about collaborations like this. I had to follow the weather, and be able to find a good composition in minutes, if the weather turned good. I had to throw all the ideas I had in advance out the window, and try to come up with something new.
But I can’t complain. Getting to drive around Iceland is always a dream, no matter how many times I have done it. I love Iceland, and am always so excited to get back. Being able to do a collaboration there was a dream come true.
I’m not even sure I have come to the point of this article. i guess I just wanted to talk a bit about the difficulties of such collaborations, and that there is always a way to create something stunning.