Einar Gudmann

THE N-PHOTO INTERVIEW

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…

A wave crashes on the rocky shore of the Snæfellsnes Peninsula in western Iceland, while low light bathes the Lóndrangar basalt columns and snow-covered mountains in the distance.

Images: Einar Gudmann

Camera: Nikon D4S

Lens: 14-24mm f/2.8

Exposure: 1/4 sec, f/18, ISO100

Einar Gudmann Profile

● Einar Gudmann and his partner Gyda Henningsdóttir are among Iceland’s leading wildlife and landscape photographers.

● Einar was born and raised in the north of the country, where he lives with Gyda, who is from the tiny island of Grimsey, situated on the Arctic Circle.

● The couple are the authors of two photo books about their home:

Iceland:Wild at Heart and Photographing Iceland.

● Before teaming up as full-time professional photographers, both Einar and Gyda had successful careers: Gyda as a managing director of a fashion store and Einar as an advisor for the Environmental Agency of Iceland.

● Last year, the couple launched their own YouTube channel and had a 113m 2 print of Gyda’s image of Aldeyjarfoss waterfall, taken on a D850, mounted on a new fishing plant in north Iceland.

www.gudmann.is; www.gyda.is; www.photographingiceland.is

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.”