Stian Rekdal's Iceland Time-Lapse: 3,000 Miles and 40,000 Photos

Photographer Stian Rekdal spent three weeks driving more than 3,000 miles around Iceland, shooting over 40,000 photographs of its waterfalls, mountains, coastline and night skies. He turned thousands of those frames into a time-lapse film later shared by National Geographic as "Elemental Iceland".

Elemental Iceland: watch the time-lapse

Time-lapse squeezes hours into seconds. Clouds pour over ridges, light sweeps across lava fields and water blurs into silk, while the land itself stays still. Iceland suits the technique perfectly, because its weather changes fast and its light, especially in the long summer evenings and the dark winter nights, never seems to settle.

Rekdal's numbers show how much work sits behind a few minutes of film: more than 40,000 exposures for a final cut built from a few thousand. Most of the effort happens in choosing which sequences belong together.

Driving Iceland's Ring Road

Three thousand miles is well over three laps of Iceland's main road. Route 1, the Ring Road, runs 1,309 km (813 miles) around the island and is paved for its entire length. It was completed in 1974, the 1,100th anniversary of Iceland's settlement, when the bridge over the Skeiðará in the south-east finally closed the loop.

The road links Reykjavík, Borgarnes, Akureyri, Egilsstaðir, Höfn, Vík and Selfoss, and many of the country's best-known sights lie on or just off it:

• Seljalandsfoss and Skógafoss, the twin waterfalls of the south coast.
• Dyrhólaey, the sea arch and headland near Vík.
• Jökulsárlón, the glacier lagoon full of drifting icebergs.
• Mývatn, the volcanic lake district of the north.
• Dettifoss and Goðafoss, two of the most powerful waterfalls in the north-east.

Best time to photograph Iceland

Summer brings the midnight sun, open highland roads and long golden hours that can last most of the night, which is ideal for slow time-lapse sequences. Winter brings snow, ice caves and the northern lights, but only a few hours of daylight.

Drive the Ring Road in winter with a plan: it has the highest snow-clearing priority, but mountain passes such as Hellisheiði, Holtavörðuheiði and Öxnadalsheiði can close in storms, so check the Icelandic Road Administration before each day's drive.

More Iceland films and places

If Rekdal's film makes you want more, watch Aprilgarden’s Iceland time-lapse, or an Iceland film with a personal ending.

Related reading

• Strokkur Geyser: From a Blue Dome to a Column of Spray
• Eyjafjallajökull in Time-Lapse: Sean Stiegemeier’s May 2010 Film
• Iceland’s Blue Lagoon: Geothermal Water and the Landscape Around It

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