Many dream of having a fairy tale in Iceland. Not so long ago, John Braynard had one of those and recently he wrote an excellent photo blog about his trip to Iceland, which received quite a bit of attention on Reddit. In the blog, he explains:
“Iceland came on my radar as a teenager, spending hours with headphones on, listening to the melancholy tracks of Sigur Rós. This was just the gateway of Icelandic “pop music” for me. Soon, I had Bjork and Múm on repeat as well… I filtered Iceland residents [on MySpace] and added as many as I could to my MySpace Music account. I even put an Iceland map up on my bedroom wall.
“Yeah… the infatuation got that creepy.
“Fast forward almost 15 years later – I finally got to use that map… For 16 days my girlfriend and I drove almost 5,000 km around the island. We had a general direction, but we let the way decide what we did each day…
“Camping at night and cooking on a butane burner and a pot, the temperatures often dropped into the single digits (Celsius) and the skies were more overcast then sunny – but the immense landscapes made everyday an amazing one.”
John was born in South Carolina, in the USA, but has somehow found himself living in Salzburg, Austria, for the past 3 years. There he spends his time working, riding bikes, and snapping a photo here and there.
From a young age, he says, he always enjoyed photography. As a child he would look through family photos for hours on end, and once he got to university, he picked up a handful of photography classes, and that’s where his passion blossomed.
“After university,” John says, “I got into some digital photography for a bit, but ended up spending all my time riding bikes and chasing women. When I moved to Austria I decided to get back into photography to capture my adventures.”
“My philosophy is to try not to take it too seriously and just really shoot for fun.”
The blog documents their travels in beautiful, dramatic and often moody photos from Reykjavík…
to the South Coast…
to the east…
and even the Highlands…
“Iceland was a blast,” John says. “I fell in love with the country. I honestly think about it every day – it can’t escape me. Shooting photos in Iceland was really different and often difficult for me. I have a preference for photos with heavy symmetry. I like a nice balance left to right.
“Iceland’s landscape is so raw and dynamic that I had to break myself away from my symmetric-heavy style and try a few different things – which was exciting and made for a great experience. There is just so much to see and explore in Iceland for shooting photos. It’s paradise.”
The photos in this post are selected, with kind permission, from John’s original blog, which we highly recommend you read. John continues to bike and photograph the world for fun, as you can see on his website and his Instagram account.
If you would like a chance to take your own unique and dramatic photos of Iceland’s magnificent landscape, follow some of the links above, check out our tours, or look into renting a car for your stay in Iceland. Look around this site for lots of helpful information, drop us a line or come by our office, and we’ll help you organize your tour from start to finish (for free!).
