This is a summary of my adventures through Europe during Aug/Sep 2011 with my good friend and fellow photographer Dane. Apart from Iceland, we had no schedule and just took each day as it came.
Over the 8 week period we:
• Drove approx 8,000kms throughout Iceland, England, Scotland, Slovenia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Austria, Germany and Paris
• Slept around 22 nights in small compact hire cars in backstreets, car parks or anywhere we could find
• Drank about 1,000 coffees (well Dane did)
• Lived off a mixed diet of petrol station and supermarket food with the occasional pub dinner if we were splurging
• Spent around $600 on road tolls and fines
• Got lost numerous times including a short cut which didn’t quite work out in Croatia. We wound up on a dirt road surrounded by unexploded landmine fields near the Bosnian border.
• Battled constant rain and extreme winds (i.e. enough to blow my 10kg backpack down a hill in a half gust) and saw enough waterfalls in Iceland and Scotland to last a life time
Was it all worth it? ABSOLUTELY!
Below are my favourite photos from the trip. All prints are available for purchase, please email any enquiries to info@davidcampbellimagery.com
I hope you enjoy viewing these photos as much as I did taking them.
Skógafoss waterfall situated in the south of Iceland. The Skógafoss is one of the biggest waterfalls in the country with a width of 25 metres (82 feet) and a drop of 60 m (200 ft). The people in the foreground getting a happy snap give you a good sense of scale.
A close up view of the spectacular Icebergs floating within Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon in South East Iceland. We spent hours here and on the black sand beach checking out these unique and ever changing icebergs. A definite highlight of the trip and a must see in Iceland.
It seemed you could not drive more than a few kilometres in Iceland without spotting a waterfall. Here is Dane limbering up for yet another waterfall shoot somewhere in southern Iceland.
With the combination of a late evening storm encroaching, fading sunset light and a slow shutter speed on the camera, I tried to capture the beauty and chaos in the dramatic scene which was unfolding before me. The main feature of the photo being 'Durdle Door'. It is a natural limestone arch on the Jurassic Coast near Lulworth in Dorset, England. Seconds after I took this shot I was bolting back up the huge hill to the car, just made it before the rain bucketed down.
London, England: The Millennium Bridge on the right with the City of London School below St Paul's Cathedral in the distance. What you fail to see in this photo are the thousands of people who were lining the riverbank area behind me celebrating and enjoying the annual Thames Festival. I guess that is the beauty of photography you can capture a moment in time and try to tell your own story through an image. I chose to capture the peacefulness as opposed to the chaos. I noticed the couple standing fairly still on the bridge (right hand side foreground) so I slowed the shutter down enough to capture the movements in the clouds, blur all the people walking on the bridge and the water in the Thames, but at the same time capture all the details in the static architecture along with the couple. I'm quite pleased with how this one turned out.
Late afternoon at the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Élysée in Paris, France.
The weather had been raining on and off all day, but there were brief moments when the sun light broke through the dark and overcast skies. After spending a couple of hours dodging rain squalls and waiting patiently I managed to get this. Oh and by the way if you are like me and had heard the statistic about there being a car accident here every X minutes, for the record I didn't see one in the 2hrs in which I was there.
After a 5.30am wake up, it was straight onto the Metro and off to Place du Trocadero in Paris for what I was hoping to be an epic sunrise. Unfortunately the sunrise was less than spectacular. However once I converted this image to black and white It kind of grew on me. It was still well worth the effort of getting up, as there was not a single person there when we arrived apart from the street cleaners and the pigeons.
You may be wondering exactly what this image is of? Well it is actually a photo of the reflection in one of the water pools which surround The Louvre Pyramid in Paris.
I waited for the sunset colours to really come alive and then timed it in order to capture a person walking past, just to give the shot a human element and a sense of scale.
If you are ever in Paris please do yourself a favour and visit The Louvre in the evening. Once the lights come on it really is a sight to behold + by that time the majority of crowds and tour groups have all left for the day.
Another angle of the glass pyramid and mirror like reflection, The Louvre - Paris, France.
Lake Bohinj - Slovenia
Slovenia, what a pleasant surprise. A very small country, easy to navigate and drive around, breathtaking scenery, amazingly friendly people, not too many tourists and dirt cheap!!! This Country will become more and more popular, so if you can GO THERE NOW.
Lake Bled, Slovenia. The lake is situated in a picturesque environment, surrounded by mountains and forests. A medieval castle stands above the lake on the north shore. The lake surrounds Bled Island, the only natural island in Slovenia. The island has several buildings, the main one being the Pilgrimage Church of the Assumption of Mary, built in the 15th century, where weddings are held regularly. The church has a 52-metre tower and there is a stairway with 99 steps leading up to the building.
Predjama Castle in Slovenia.
Built under a natural rocky arch high in the stone wall to make access difficult. Pretty cool huh!?
Kozjak Waterfall - Slovenia. This is at the end of a 15-20min walk through the forest. This waterfall is tucked away out of sight in a cave between cliffs so after navigating past quite a few people, their dogs?! and of course their obligatory and very annoying Nordic ski poles (walking sticks) on the very narrow walkway leading around the last cliff wall it was quite a sight when this hidden gem was revealed.
The extremely picturesque town of Hallstatt in upper Austria. It is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Listed Site... I can see why,it's like looking at a postcard.
It was a lovely place to wake up to (even if I was sleeping in a car) and enjoy a coffee and bakery goodies.
Dusk in Prague, as seen from the observation deck on the Clock Tower. Such a great city and we only scratched the surface there. I was scolded by the guard of the tower seconds after I took this shot for using a tripod...Sorry old mate (not really).
Neuschwanstein Castle is a 19th-century Romanesque Revival palace on a rugged hill above the village of Hohenschwangau near Füssen in southwest Bavaria, Germany.
The palace has appeared prominently in several movies and was the inspiration for Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle. There are some great treks in the surrounding mountains offering up superb vistas and various angles of the castle.
Derwentwater post sunset. One of the principal bodies of water in the Lake District National Park in North West England. We drove from Liverpool, through the Yorkshire Dales and up into the Cumbria region. Some remarkable countryside and very friendly people.
We did not have much luck weather wise during our time on the Isle of Skye in the north west of Scotland. This was a brief moment of respite on the muddy Fairy Pools circuit in between rain downpours and gale force winds.
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New York - Flatiron Building. I fell in love with this architectural masterpiece
Mt Cook National Park - New Zealand South Island
Sedona - Arizona USA
Yorkshire Dales - United Kingdom
Sydney beach sunrise - Maroubra Beach surfer
Canyonlands National Park Utah - Mesa Arch at sunrise and -15 degrees celcius
Colorado River Arizona - Horseshoe Bend, Page AZ
Grand Canyon Sunset - Arizona
Grand Canyon at dusk - Arizona
