Israeli nature photographer Erez Marom spends a month in Iceland every year, and his winter images show why: blue ice lit by gold sunlight, waterfalls framed by snow, the aurora over frozen shores. For a photographer raised in a warm climate, Iceland's cold, "harsh" landscapes are the point. As he put it, they are often "much more exciting and spectacular than tropical beaches or green meadows."
Erez Marom, an Israeli photographer in Iceland
Marom was born and lives in Israel and works as a landscape and wildlife photographer. When My Modern Met featured his Iceland series, he was leading three photography workshops a year across the island. He has since taught and guided trips in places as varied as Norway's Lofoten Islands, Greenland, Patagonia, Namibia, Ethiopia, Bolivia and Madagascar, but Iceland remains central to his work.
"I think more people should be exposed to these so-called 'harsh' landscapes," he said. His Iceland series makes that case through golden sunsets, northern lights, frozen waterfalls, and occasional long exposures.
Godafoss, the waterfall of the gods
One of the waterfalls Marom photographed is Goðafoss in north Iceland, where the Skjálfandafljót river drops 12 metres over a curved rock edge about 30 metres wide. The falls lie right beside the Ring Road at the junction with the Sprengisandur highland route, about 45 minutes' drive from Akureyri, and a walking loop of around 3 kilometres circles the area.
The name can be read as "waterfall of the gods" or "waterfall of the chieftain". A popular story says the lawspeaker Þorgeir Ljósvetningagoði threw his statues of the Norse gods into the falls after Iceland adopted Christianity around the year 1000. Historians regard the tale as a 19th-century invention, yet a window in Akureyri's church still depicts it.
Vatnajökull ice and the blue ice caves
Much of Iceland's ice photography comes from the southeast, around Vatnajökull. Covering about 7,700 square kilometres, it is the second-largest ice cap in Europe by area, and several volcanoes lie beneath it, including the subglacial lake and volcano Grímsvötn. Since 7 June 2008 the glacier has been part of Vatnajökull National Park, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site covering more than 1.4 million hectares and ten central volcanoes, eight of them under the ice. UNESCO describes it with the phrase "Fire and Ice".
The blue caves that form inside Icelandic glaciers are shaped by summer meltwater and by geothermal heat from below, so they change from year to year. The ice-cave season usually runs from November to the end of March. Book a professional guide: crampons and an ice axe are required, and caves and glacier fronts should never be entered alone.
Nearby, the glacier lagoon of Jökulsárlón collects icebergs calved from the Breiðamerkurjökull outlet glacier and has appeared in several films, including a James Bond adventure.
Photographing Iceland in winter
Marom's series shows what winter adds: low sun that turns ice gold, long nights for aurora, and snow that simplifies a scene into a few strong shapes. A tripod is essential for long exposures of waterfalls and night skies. Pair a winter trip with our guide Ten Iceland Experiences: Waterfalls, Glaciers, Hot Springs and City Life, watch the surf film Arctic Swell, or see Iceland's frozen waterfalls from another angle with Tim Emmett and Dawn Glanc’s ice-climbing feature.
Related reading
- Blue Iceland: Andy Lee’s Infrared Landscape Photography
- Iceland Aurora Films: Northern Lights from Sixty Locations
- Crystalapse in Iceland: A Landscape Film with a Personal Ending
- Stian Rekdal’s Iceland Time-Lapse: From a Road Journey to a Film
- Strokkur Geyser: From a Blue Dome to a Column of Spray
What beautiful photos!
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