Einar Gudmann
In the land of glaciers and volcanoes, Einar Gudmann is one half of Iceland’s premier photography team capturing the country’s unique natural beauty. He tells Keith Wilson why he enjoys photographing sea eagles, waterfalls, lava fields and Arctic foxes in sub-zero temperatures…
Such is Iceland’s popularity with photographers the world over, it is difficult to imagine that, before the tourist boom of the past 20 years, many Icelanders showed scant appreciation for their country’s natural beauty. This is not the observation of this foreign interloper (I first went to Iceland in 1987), but the assessment of a native Icelander Einar Gudmann, one of country’s leading nature photographers. “During the 1980s and ’90s, Icelanders were not much interested in travelling around Iceland,” says Einar. “There was not this sense that Iceland was special in any way.”
That all changed, of course, thanks mostly to the interest of the first visitors from overseas than any self-provoked awakening by the Icelanders themselves. Einar recalls his own realization of this change of perspective: “You would find photographers and videographers travelling and they were probably making documentaries about this spectacular country we live in, but in general I think there were only a few Icelanders photographing and actually thinking about Iceland as some natural wonder. It was later when we learnt to appreciate it for what it is.”
The son of a painter and sculptor, Einar remembers his first trip to the highlands of Iceland’s harsh interior when he was 15: “We drove for four days in the middle of Iceland and we met two cars the whole time.” But it wasn’t until many years later that photographing the country’s unique landscape would determine his future life-path.
So, Einar, when did you become interested in photography as something more than a hobby? Well, it didn’t happen in one day, it happened gradually. In 1990, I started working in a store that was dealing in films, selling frames and cameras to people. I was there for four years developing terrible images of children! I was photographing my own children, of course, but I would not consider that the beginning of my photographic career. This was a seed for the future because later, around 1999, I was into fly fishing and always in eastern Iceland, fishing for brown trout, Arctic char, and one day I got the idea to rent a plane and shoot the river from the air. This turned out to be a good idea for my fellow fly fishermen, my friends, because everybody wanted to buy these CDS I had with the aerial shots. They wanted to see how the river was and how the bottom of it was, especially.
So they could work out where the best places were to fish?
Yes, to find where the fish are, where
Companies started to contact us about bird photos but ended up buying landscape photos!
can I wade over the river, that was a big factor in photographing them because we found new grounds to fish by looking at the photos. This turned out to be a good business: a couple of years later I had made seven CDS with 5000 images of rivers in Iceland seen from above. I sold this to a company a few years later and started working for the Environment Agency of Iceland. Being in a wildlife protection and hunting department, working there for 14 years, I started taking landscape and bird photos when I had the time off, and gradually I started making money doing that.
When was this?
I started with Gyda, my wife.
She’s also a professional photographer. At the time, this is about 2005, we started to take photography seriously. This is a long process, learning what is a good photo and what is not. Those aerial images were not good pictures, I looked at them as data, not a photo to hang on the wall. In 2005, we started taking lots of bird photos and, one year later, we started also doing landscape photography. Gradually, companies started to contact us about bird photos but ended up buying landscape photos!
What sort of companies?
All kinds. I don’t like to brag about it, but almost all companies in Iceland and the government – even the Icelandic passport today has photos from me and Gyda. There’s a graphic on every page with a greyscale image. It’s difficult talking about my photography without talking also about my wife, because we do everything together and we have grown in this together.
So, you’ve grown together as photographers then? Absolutely. And we have now made books together. The first book was Iceland: Wild at Heart. It’s a landscape and wildlife book and it’s been printed three times, it’s been a bestseller, until the COVID pandemic came. Then we published this one, Photographing Iceland: A Photo Guide to 100 Locations.
I bet that one’s popular?
Well, this one came out 15 minutes before COVID! We haven’t had a good chance to sell it. This is about 350 pages and we’ve taken images in a lot of unknown locations in Iceland and covered them in this book.
What are your favourite locations?
I guess the favourite location is still not found; it’s the next location I’m discovering because there are always places to be discovered. There are lots of locations I like to go back to again and again because the light is never the same, the weather is never the same, and conditions are constantly changing. We are always trying to find new locations, and some say that Iceland has been over-photographed, but I would say this book reflects on that because there are maybe 20 or 30 locations in Iceland that are well known because they are very accessible for the common tourist. But then you have a lot more which are not, which even photographers in Iceland have not necessarily been to.
Anywhere in particular?
In my area, in the north of Iceland, there are still a lot of waterfalls I haven’t been to, so there’s a lot to discover. Finding a new waterfall in some valley with a beautiful foreground and background is a kind of sport, because nobody’s been there. I find that challenging, to come into a new location and try to see it with fresh eyes, because nobody has been there and I have not seen a photo from there. So you have to, in a way, invent the location, to see what it has to offer, and that’s very challenging, to try to be creative.
That’s an interesting concept, to actually create a new location with the photo that you frame…
It is. We have seen that one photo can change a lot of things. The power of photography is obvious in the Icelandic tourist boom. I mean, there would be no tourists in Iceland if it wasn’t for photography.
A lot of photographers never stop coming back because they say Iceland is unique. What makes it unique from your point of view?
I could name a few things, but what is very unique with Iceland is that it’s a small country with lot of photography locations in the same spot. If you are in the west of Iceland you can drive between 20 different landscape locations within one hour or so of each other. And, of course, the light – in some seasons you can have hours of spectacular light.
People talk about the contrast – you have ice, you have these glaciers, you can be in a lava field at the same time; you have mountains and also drive and suddenly you’re somewhere you could call a desert. That’s what landscape photographers like: that you cover a lot of subjects in a short amount of time. You don’t have to spend a lot of time travelling between locations.
One photo can change a lot of things… there would be no tourists in Iceland if it wasn’t for photography
I’m sure you shoot in any weather, so what would you pack today? Last year in March we went photographing Arctic foxes and we had a snowstorm for a few days,
very bad weather. We like it when we have bad conditions like that, because for photography it is always interesting to have changing weather. We only use Nikons, we have two D850s and the Z 6, which is mostly for video, but also for stills once in a while. The Z 6 is fantastic.
What about lenses?
I use mostly the 500mm f/4, the VR version, and converters. Gyda uses mostly the 300mm f/2.8 with a 2x teleconverter. These are fantastic cameras and lenses. We also have two D4S cameras. If you have to go through fire and ice you use the D4S. The D850 is fantastic for landscapes.
With the D850, do you have a preference for shooting landscapes over wildlife?
Well, I use the D850 most of the time, for wildlife and everything, but there are conditions when shooting wildlife where I would not trust the D850.
Why’s that?
I would rather take the D4S when you need a fast shutter speed and high ISO. There’s something in the D850 that betrays me, for example when you have sea eagles landing. This is something that happens in three or four seconds; you don’t have time to do anything except aim and shoot.
Usually, we’re shooting at ISO3200 or higher, and it seems that you need a lot higher shutter speed for the D850 than you need for a D4S. There’s some difference in the sensor that explains this maybe, but that’s our experience, that we can trust the D4S for this.
For high-speed action?
For high speed action, in high ISO. I know these sensors have been tested back and forth, but in practical situations, I see that when you have bad light and you need a fast shutter speed still, then you have to go for a higher ISO, and the D4S handles that better. The D850 sometimes… but the keepers are not as many. I notice that. I haven’t heard anyone talk about that in tests and reviews. I can get away with 1/1600 sec shutter speed on the D4S with ISO3200 and have a fine image, but it seems to be smudgy in the D850.
Interesting…
But otherwise it’s a perfect camera. I’m not trying to talk badly about it!
But when it comes to taking a landscape you will naturally go for the bigger sensor of the D850? Absolutely. It’s a fantastic sensor and if you can use the base ISO I have not seen much better. It’s fantastic for that and being able to use the flip-up screen. I use it for perhaps 95% of everything we do.
We like it when we have bad conditions because for photography it is always interesting to have changing weather
When it comes to landscapes, what is your go-to lens?
We have a lot of lenses. We call the
14-24mm our money lens. We have two of them. One for Gyda, so we have two of everything: two D4S, two D850, two of most lenses…
His and hers!
Yes, it hurts the money side of things but that’s how things work here. The 14-24mm is fantastic. I’ve had it since the D3 came out, in 2008! I started with a D100 in 2005, then the D200, then the D3, then the D4S and then the D850, and today I am convinced that Nikon is doing a fantastic thing with the Z series. Having had the Z 6 for one year now, I have no doubt that this is the future, especially for guys like us who need glasses to see well! The viewfinder is absolutely fantastic.
After a year of use, have you had any problems with the Z 6 in Iceland’s extreme weather?
I can’t tell you how often I have tried to kill it! Two weeks ago, I was photographing a waterfall in Gullfoss, that’s when I got it covered in ice because there was spray from the waterfall. It was -12°C and got completely frozen, and I couldn’t move any of the buttons , but still it worked just fine after a few minutes warming up in the car. And that’s not the worst case…
Really?
In March last year, I was in a snowstorm. I had been trying to take videos of Arctic foxes with the Z 6 and I had it on my 500mm lens with a converter. It was crazy weather; the snow was drifting and I almost couldn’t stand. I was packing to go home to the small cold house we have maybe one kilometre away. I had the camera and lens in a protective bag and the body came off. I dropped it in the snow, but I didn’t notice and I walked home. The body is almost nothing on the lens, so I didn’t notice and when I opened the door of my house trying to get the snow off my gear, I took the lens out and saw there was no camera on the lens! I must have dropped it somewhere…
What did you do?
I went immediately out searching for it in the snowstorm and it was difficult to find it. The snowdrift was that heavy that my footsteps had already disappeared, but I had a vague idea of where I had been working. I found it lying face-down in the snow, almost covered, but the sensor was full of snow. I took it and hit the back of the camera to get most of the snow out, and once inside I warmed it, dried it, for maybe four or five hours, put it on a lens, turned it on and everything was fine.
That’s an amazing story!
So, besides me trying to kill it in the snow, the Z 6 always works just fine. I trust them. I was very sceptical going from the DSLRS to the Z system because I haven’t been a fan of mirrorless, but today I’m convinced that even guys like me are going to go there one day.
What have you learned from Gyda while working together?
I learn almost everything from her because we are doing everything together. When we are in the field we often go in different directions because she wants to photograph this and I want to photograph that. If we find something interesting, of course we tell each other, but we try to give each other space to be creative in our own ways. She’s very creative and I believe she is one of the best photographers out there, and she’s always open to exploring new methods and techniques. What we get from each other is support, because being in a tent waiting for a sea eagle to land for 14 hours, it’s terrible to do that alone, but if you have company that’s much better. I don’t think we would be photographers today if we weren’t in this together.
Do you have different subject strengths? For example, is Gyda the bird photographer and you’re the landscape photographer?
We are equal in every respect. We both started in bird photography, but we made a living by landscape photography. We have galleries on our websites, each our own website.
What do you regard as crucial advice to improve your photography?
I believe to grow as photographers it’s important to critique your own images. One of the best things to do is to take one image you’re happy with and try to analyse how this image could be better. Look at it with a critique in mind, what’s the weak point? Usually, there’s always something you could have done better. There’s no such thing as a perfect picture.