Dark skies, glowing clouds and mountains that look carved from stone: Andy Lee's Blue Iceland series turns one of the world's most photographed countries into something closer to a Romantic-era painting. The UK-based photographer made the pictures with infrared photography, a technique that records light our eyes cannot see.
What infrared photography is
Infrared photography captures near-infrared light, usually wavelengths of about 700 to 900 nanometres, just beyond the red end of the visible spectrum. Filters for this work block most visible light and look black or deep red to the eye. A popular example, the Hoya R72, cuts off below 720 nm.
Most digital cameras have a built-in “hot mirror” that blocks infrared. Photographers either use a very dark infrared filter with long exposures, or have the camera converted: the hot mirror is removed and replaced with a glass cover or an infrared filter, so the camera can shoot infrared handheld.
Why the skies turn dark and the colours turn blue
Infrared changes how a landscape looks in predictable ways:
- Dark skies. The air scatters far less near-infrared light than blue light, so it records very dark, sometimes almost black.
- Bright clouds and foliage. Clouds stand out sharply, and leaves and grass reflect infrared strongly and glow white. This is called the Wood effect, after the physicist Robert W. Wood, who published the first infrared photographs in 1910.
- Clearer distance. Infrared cuts through haze better than visible light, so far ridges stay crisp.
- False colour. In editing, many photographers swap the red and blue channels. That keeps the pale foliage and turns the sky blue, the look behind series like Blue Iceland.
Iceland's landscape through infrared
Iceland suits the technique well. The island covers about 103,000 km², and around a tenth of its land lies under glaciers, the largest being Vatnajökull at about 7,764 km². Its highest peak, Hvannadalshnúkur, reaches 2,110 m, and about 30 active volcanic systems shape the terrain. Bare rock, lava fields, moss and ice give infrared plenty of strong contrasts, and the frequently changing skies add drama.
Lee's frames are built on simple shapes: a mountain silhouette, a band of cloud, a line of foreground. With the colour reduced to a narrow range of blues, those shapes carry each picture.
Trying infrared landscape photography yourself
- Pick sunny days. Strong sunlight gives the most infrared and the darkest skies.
- Use a tripod if your camera is unconverted, since exposures behind an infrared filter can last many seconds.
- Shoot RAW and set a custom white balance, then experiment with channel swapping in editing.
More of Lee's work is on Bored Panda, which shows 16 images from the series. For a practical guide, see Digital Camera World's how to shoot digital infrared photography. For other views of the country, see Erez Marom’s Iceland landscapes and, for a different kind of framing, Alison Turner’s repeated-window compositions.
Related reading
- An Iceland Timelapse from aprilgarden
- Stian Rekdal’s Iceland Time-Lapse: From a Road Journey to a Film
- Strokkur Geyser: From a Blue Dome to a Column of Spray
- Eyjafjallajökull in Time-Lapse: Sean Stiegemeier’s May 2010 Film
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