Appendix 2 - Yet more from Reykjavik

As I was looking through the Reykjavik pictures I found a few that I had overlooked because in their raw form they looked very dark and lacking interest.  However when I processed them I discovered that they weren't that bad after all.  The first five were ones taken out of the windows in the tower of the Hallgrimskirkja Church. This first one is looking inland a bit with the mountains in distance.

The second photo is towards the harbour.

This shot is straight across bay.  If you look closely the Sun Voyager statue is below the crane in the centre of the photo.

In this next shot the sun was lighting up the mountain below the clouds and creating golden reflections across the water in the bay.

Looking across to the South we can see the Pearl in the centre of the photo.

This final shot was taken from down near the waterfront and shows the amazing low clouds bubbling over the mountains across the bay.

More soon, probably starting with Geysir.

Appendix 1 - More of Reykjavik

Back from Iceland and I'm going through the thousand plus photos and spending a bit more time on processing them now I have more time available.  In the appendices part of blog I am just going to include ones not appearing previously although I will probably reprocess most of the photos from the original blog too and put the best ones on my website.  There may be more appendices than original posts depending on how it goes but in this first one I am using photos from the first day in Reykjavik.

I'll start with a photo of Hallgrimskirkja Church because it is such an iconic piece of architecture.  For this photo I chose an angle looking across the front face of the building which I haven't seen much on thee internet before but I think it works quite well.  To be honest it's hard to find and uninteresting angle to look at this building, I love the simplicity and the sweeping blockiness of the design.

I also made this photograph because the rear of the church doesn't appear much on the internet. That is a shame because I think the the curves of the almost mosque-like rear makes a strange contrast to the angularity of the rest of the church.

The inside of the church is just as stark and grey as the outside.  There are very few statues or paintings around the walls and aisles within the church.  The one striking item in the church is the array of organ pipes above the entrance to the church.  While we were there there was a young lady playing the organ and filling the church with beautiful music.

We took the lift up the tower of the church which let us out in the area behind the clocks.  Each one had a different set of pictures around but all of them was damaged or had words scraped into it.  This one was the least damaged.  It was quite interesting to see the electric clockwork in the centre.  All very different to the clocks in the big churches and cathedrals in England.

From the clock hall was a few flights of stairs up to the level where there were windows on all sides of the tower.  Out of the windows were some great views over the city and across the bay to the mountains.  Here's a photo across the bay with the mountains lit up by the early evening (1:30 pm) sun and the low clouds obscuring the peaks.

After leaving the church we made our way back down to the harbour where we had parked the car. I was interested in seeing the Imagine Peace Tower which is on an island in the bay but during the day there's not much to see from the city because it isn't lit up.  We had planned to return to Reykjavik in the evening one day to see it.  What we did find next to the harbour was the Sun Voyager statue which is very photogenic, so I took loads of photos from lots of different angles.

After taking a portrait photograph I just have to make a landscape one from a slightly different angle.

One more after undergoing a black and white processing.

In the original blog entry I included a photo including this statue but from a distance so I felt it was OK to use this one in the appendices.

I'll continue to work through processing more of my photos and make another post in a few days.

Day 1 - Manchester to Reykjavik

Sunrise North of Manchester this morning.  Flying at a height of 11 kilometers on the way to Iceland and the best view was as the sun broke through the clouds shortly after levelling out.  Take off, flight and landing were all pretty smooth and we landed 15 minutes earlier then scheduled.  Our car was upgraded from a Suzuki Jimny to a Grand Vitara with studded tyres. Cool.

We drove to Reykjavik and saw some great views on the journey.  At Reykjavik we parked near the bay North of the city and walked up into the centre.  We went to a healthy restaurant for a light bite before heading up the hill to the church.  Our first view of Hallgrimskirkja Church with the sun behind and Leif Erikson to the front.  Quite an impressive piece of architecture and the inside was very minimalistic with a very shiny pipe organ.

Here's a closer view of Leif Erikson in the sunlight.

After we looked around inside the church we bought tickets for the lift up the church tower to see the view over the city.  As the lift doors opened we bumped into a young couple who appeared to have just got engaged at top of the tower (awwwww).  We got to look out of the windows which are just above the clock faces and this is one of the views over the city and across the bay to the mountains.

Here's a shot looking down from the tower at Leif Erikson.

This is a closer look at the view across the bay from the church tower.  It's amazing.

We walked back down from the church to have a closer look across the bay and we spotted this sculpture by the water. Here's Ginny...

... and Colin.

The sky was changing continually and as we walked along the path the view and the reflections were amazing.

Further along was another sculpture with an incredible backdrop of the water mountains, cloud and sky.

After  Rejkyavik we went to the supermarket for supplies and then headed for the apartment at Laugarvatn.  There was some parts of the journey where we had snow and ice on the road so it was a bit scary. The apartment is great and Ginny made a lovely salmon and pasta meal for our supper.  Tomorrow we aren't going to go far, probably just to Geysir, Gulfoss and here abouts.  We've bought tickets for the local spa baths so we'll probably spend sometime there too.