Icelandic Horse at the Midnight Dawn

Most of the time, when I come back from a trip and start reviewing my photos, the image I love the most is rarely from a planned shoot—even if the trip was dedicated to photography.

You do your research, spend months or even years planning. You study every detail about a location, the timing and angles of sunrise and sunset, every turn on the hiking trail leading there, and consider every possible factor you can think of—yet you still end up with just average images. Then, on the way back to the Airbnb, a spontaneous photo beats all of that.

It was mid-June, during the famous midnight sun season in Iceland.

I had just finished shooting at a planned location in northwest Iceland and was driving along Route 1 toward Kirkjufell. It was around 2:30 a.m. I looked out the passenger-side window and saw a perfect backdrop forming as the sun slowly rose. Warm, orange-tinted high clouds were complemented by a thick layer of cooler, bluish clouds underneath. In the foreground was a vast stretch of grassland in shadow, with a thin layer of fog that gradually blended into the distant clouds. As perfect as the backdrop was, one thing was missing—a point of interest, a subject to complete the scene. So I kept driving.

As the sun continued to rise, the light reached an ideal balance between highlights and shadows. In a split second, the silhouette of some kind of animal appeared in my peripheral vision. Before my brain could process what I had seen, my car had already passed it by more than a hundred meters. I knew I had to act quickly. I checked the mirror to make sure there was no traffic behind me, then slammed on the brakes. I pulled over to the roadside, walked back with my camera and tripod—and there it was: an Icelandic horse standing in the perfect spot, minding its own business, against a perfect backdrop.

You can plan all you want, but you cannot plan the weather, light, or fog—and certainly not an Icelandic horse appearing in the perfect spot at the perfect moment.