Archive for June, 2012

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Photo diary: coming home from Iceland

June 9, 2012


I discovered that if I shot Icelandic vistas in black-and-white, they looked more like the Sigur Ros video of my dreams.


On our way to the airport, we stopped for an all-too-brief visit to the Blue Lagoon, Iceland’s most famous spa

One of the things I loved most about Iceland is that most people seem to spend some part of almost every day sitting in hot water — definitely, my tribe.


Icelandair is like Virgin Atlantic or JetBlue, an airline that has cultivated a hip-and-groovy and humorous sensibility in its customer relations. What other airline gives you a poem on your pillow? What non-American airline provides a mini language lesson on your seat back?


This may be the first time I’ve glimpsed Greenland. There is a common saying: Greenland is mostly ice, Iceland is mostly green.

This was a big fun trip, thanks to Andy and IGLA’s decision to hold its 2012 championships in Reykjavik.

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Photo diary: Iceland day 6

June 9, 2012

Sunday morning we got up early and walked across town to take a van to a bus that took us to a farm 45 minutes outside of Reykjavik for a horseback ride.

I somehow thought we were going to ride horses out onto a lava field, some forbidding Icelandic landscape not reachable by motor vehicles. But no, we had a plenty trot on a beautiful day along a creek until we got to a scenic spot to rest and take pictures before turning around.

I’d only been on a horse once before. Icelandic horses are smaller than most, carefully bred for farming purposes. Once they leave the island for any reason, they’re not allowed back, lest they communicate diseases from abroad.

One of the most prevalent and colorful flowers on view in Iceland is indeed an invasive species — the purple lupins, which somehow found their way here from Alaska.

Back at the farm, we had an hour for lunch — our hosts served yummy soup and bread for a very modest fee. Our group included a dozen swimmers and a few other people, including two American engineering students currently at university in Sweden. Mike has such a striking face that I asked permission to photograph him.

Then a gigantic tour bus pulled up with another 20 people onboard, and we set off for the Golden Circle tour — a somewhat corny but obligatory tourist ritual that takes you around to the equivalent of the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, and Central Park. First stop was Þingvellir, which we got to view from a different perspective from our trip on Friday — here we were looking across the Continental Divide from the North American side, from the top of the Lögberg.

Next stop: Gullfoss (Golden Falls), with its ever-present rainbow

Some of us brought our own colors to add to the landscape


The other obligatory tourist attraction is Geysir, where the temperature from geothermal pools underground periodically send gigantic gushers of water into the air. (This is where we get the English word geyser.) What’s funny, though, is that the main sight you see here is tourists standing around with their cameras cocked for 10-15-20 minutes at a time, waiting to capture the two-second eruption when it happens.

I feel a little funny saying this, but I went to Iceland excited to see unprecedentedly exotic lunar-like landscapes, but even the most impressive sights reminded me of Montana, South Dakota, and the American southwest.

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Good stuff online: new Poe Ballantine story

June 9, 2012

I am always excited when an issue of The Sun arrives in the mail containing a Poe Ballantine story. His fiction reads like someone’s supernaturally eloquent diary entry, self-revealing and self-effacing at the same time, always honest about the small and large failures of a man’s emotional and artistic life. His new story, “Free Rent at the Totalitarian Hotel,” doesn’t depart one bit from its predecessors — a satisfying read. You can read a condensed version of it online here.

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Quote of the day: ADVICE

June 9, 2012

ADVICE

“Never leave in a hurry,” my older brother told me. Whenever he left in a hurry, he explained, he’d always forget something: his gloves, his checkbook.

The notion probably came from family vacations when we were children. Each time we left town, our father would drive slowly around the block while we all thought about what we might have forgotten. As we came back by the house, someone would always run in t grab a swimsuit or let the cat out.

At our family cabin I was usually the first one in the car when it was time to go home on Sunday afternoon. Once, however, when I was ten, I stayed behind to help my mother pack while the others went ahead to the car. The record player was on, and I set the needle down on an Andy Williams album to play my favorite song, “A Fool Never Learns.” I proceeded to dance around the room. To my surprise Mom dropped what she was doing, and we hopped and spun together, just the two of us, laughing and singing, all because I hadn’t been in a hurry to get home.

That advice has proved useful to me as a photojournalist. I make it a practice to linger awhile after an interview and chat about the news of the day. Many times, by staying a few extra minutes, I get that golden quote or clock off a candid shot that ends up being the best.

— Terrell Williams, “Readers Write,” The Sun


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Photo diary: Iceland day 5

June 9, 2012

Saturday morning, while Andy participated in the last day of swimming competitions, I moseyed around Reykjavik.

I stopped in to tour Hallgrímskirkja, the church whose 245-foot-high tower stands out on the Reykjavik skyline and serves as a navigational tool.

After all the ornate Italian churches I’ve seen in recent years, the interior shocked me with its Lutheran austerity.

Lurking around Cafe Loki across the street, trying to get a wi-fi signal, I started chatting with this handsome guy from Houston named Carlos Obando who turned out to be the co-president of IGLA.

Back at Laugardalslaug, the meet ended with the Pink Flamingo, a floorshow of sketches, this year by four teams. I liked the way the Iceland team used the light and the reflection off the pool.

But inevitably the large, boisterous New York contingent — with its plethora of local references and Icelandic in-jokes — won the Pink Flamingo competition, along with the water polo tournament and the overall championship.

The Pink Flamingo competition had three local celebrity judges, one of whom was this city councilwoman who presented the trophy — a stuffed dalmatian mink.

We didn’t have tickets for the IGLA banquet that night. Wandering around looking for a place to eat, we connected with a local couple who recognized us because they’d been volunteers for IGLA. Finn is a 33-year-old massage therapist and award-winning truck driver; Thorhalla is a 35-year-old linguist who grew up on a sheep farm. They met while working at the post office and described themselves as polyamorous bisexuals. We had a long walk and then dined together. I suppose we could have sought out Icelandic specialties like puffin, ram’s testicles, or putrefied shark, but they wanted pizza and we settled for pasta.

They took us to what passes for a gay bar in Reykjavik, Bar 46, where we met up with Thorhalla’s younger sister Inga, who was very drunk and very friendly.

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