I dreamt of dogs in nature so stunning it takes your breath away. I got it. Along with wind that rips cameras out of your hands and flies that can hide an entire waterfall.
A dream I couldn’t shoot at home
My dream was to photograph dogs in breathtaking nature. We have beautiful nature at home in Slovakia too, but I was dreaming of something I simply couldn’t capture on my doorstep. I was choosing between the Dolomites, Scandinavia and Iceland. This time, Iceland won.
Iceland is a paradise for photographers. Instead of driving hundreds of thousands of kilometres around Europe to find interesting locations, in Iceland you have them within a few dozen metres of each other. Iceland is simply another planet.
Problem one: my own dogs can’t come
Iceland has extremely strict rules for bringing animals into the country. Every dog has to go through a two-week quarantine, during which you’re separated and have no contact with them at all. Two weeks without my dogs just for some photos? No, thank you.
So bringing my own dogs was out of the question.
The hardest part? Finding models
I thought the weather would be the biggest challenge. Wrong. I never would have guessed that the hardest part would be finding dog models. Dog photography isn’t very established in Iceland yet, so people found it rather odd that a complete stranger was messaging them, asking to photograph their dog in front of a waterfall. Not to mention that the same stranger was asking them to travel three hours for one photo.
After a few weeks of messaging, persuading and waiting for replies, I managed to put together a pretty decent database of dog models. Although, to be honest, sometimes I didn’t know until the very last minute whether the model would actually turn up.
Iceland does whatever it wants
Iceland is a beautiful and unpredictable country. It showed me its power in the way that you plan something and nature changes it. Some shoots were therefore very spontaneous, planned on the fly, in the back seat of the car.
And no, I’m not talking about rain. Rain in Iceland is like salt on chips: it comes with it, and you sort of expect it. I mean the combination of strong wind, rain and hail. If we’d been photographing landscapes, it would have been a completely different experience. But we also had to think about the dogs.
One day the wind was so strong it was nearly ripping the cameras out of our hands. Never mind a dog posing on a rock in front of a waterfall.
No wind? Here come the flies
But honestly, there were days when we missed that wind. Because when it isn’t windy in Iceland, there are flies. And there are so many of them that they form a solid veil, which makes focusing on your dog model incredibly difficult :D.
[FOTO 5: BEHIND THE SCENES, video
The Iceland you won’t find in guidebooks
The best gift of this trip? The people. Thanks to the locals, we got to places the average tourist rarely reaches. So I came home not only with shots I could never have taken at home, but also with a whole load of memories I’ll never forget.
And would I do it again? In a heartbeat. Flies and all.
