We had another great year of travel and photography. We went on eleven named trips and countless weekend getaways. We photographed Route 66 twice in new locations. We went to the Big Island again to see Volcanoes. We visited the Grand Canyon for the seventh time in two years and made two trips to New Mexico. The desert southwest continues to be our love and our focus. But, our month in Iceland was the highlight of the year. We kept about 4,000 photographs with over 1,300 from Iceland. It should be no surprise that most of my best and favorite photographs of the year are from that trip.
It’s funny that Mary chose one of her infrared photos of this same location for her best of the year. I remember that it was super humid and we had the air conditioning in the car on high, and every time we got out of the car, our camera equipment would quickly fog over. We kept having to wipe off the lenses so we could shoot.
This is my favorite location for sunrise on the south rim as it is close to the park lodging and easy to get to. It also has an orientation so that you can shoot into the sun for sunrise and shoot up and down the canyon in great early morning light. This was a good morning.
It’s common to get afternoon thunderstorms in the Grand Canyon in August where we always hope for lightning. We did not see any lightning this day, but we’re treated to a few beautiful rainbows. Unforgettable.
This very famous church is four miles south of downtown. Ansel Adams made famous prints of the back of this church in 1929 and again in 1950. I am sure he did not have to deal with the same situation as you do now. The rear of the church is a parking lot for a popular Mexican food restaurant and is often full of cars. Go first thing in the morning, but not on Sunday as there will be mass.
If you follow some of my work, you know I love the full moon and it captivates me each month with full moon rises and sets that set my schedule for those few days of the month. In 2022, we were lucky to have two moon eclipses, one in May and one in November. I was fortunate to see both. This photo is from May 15, 2022 at 8:55 PM AST.
If you followed along with our Iceland trip on Instagram or Facebook, you know that my itinerary was all about lighthouses, waterfalls, churches, and arches. This one is near Reykjavik, and was probably my favorite.
It is estimated that Iceland has over 10,000 waterfalls. In 25 days on the island, we photographed only 36 of them. This one was one of the biggest, loudest, and most powerful (find the little human).
We had several spectacular sunrises in Iceland, This one was in a volcanic flow field that was covered in moss six-twelve inches thick.
This was the shot of the trip in my opinion. We had a spectacular morning with light and color that lasted 45 minutes. All of us captured dozens of stunning photographs. This location also made Mary’s Best of the Year.
Iceland is full of black sand beaches. It was very cold this morning, but well worth the outing to see this sunrise.
Diamond Beach and the Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon are some of the busiest tourist locations in Iceland. It’s like a carnival with food trucks, and boats, and kayaks, and lots and lots of people. However, if you get there at sunrise, you will only have a handful of hardy photographers to contend with and if you walk just a hundred yards one way or another, the people disappear. There are thousands of icebergs on the beach, some the size of baseballs, and some the size of VW Bugs. I actually found a diamond shaped one on Diamond Beach. This photograph is one of the favorites of the whole trip.
We saw a lighthouse and a church on our map as we were making our way to Siglufjordur and decided to find them. We just laughed as we drove up to this lighthouse because it was only two stories high and quite unimpressive in size. However, I just kept walking around it because I just loved the color. It was also windy, so when I found this composition, I was thrilled.
We were almost done with the trip and did not have many clear nights and bad weather was on the way. On the last night in town, the hotel desk notified us that the lights were out. Mark and I shot them for about an hour and then they were gone.
I was looking forward to photographing this church all trip long, as it was our last stop. The first time we came to it, there was some kind of ceremony going on and could not photograph it. The next day was a raging rain storm, and though I did get out of the car, the photos were not very good. Finally, on our last day in Iceland as we were driving to the airport, I captured something I liked.
All the photographs on our website are copyright protected. Please do not copy or use them without our permission. We would appreciate that. To see more of and buy our photographs, please go to www.pamphotography.com.
pamphotography 