So I have really been biding my time before I begin posting images from my trip in April. I wanted to work through all the scans and have a better idea of the body of work as a whole, but I also wanted the time to sit with my thoughts from the trip and figure out what to say. I knew I didn't want to just blurt out images. I don't like doing that; it is on par with my dislike for blurting out blurting things out verbally. I like sitting with my thoughts and then picking what I say.

But that can also lead to a bit of, not paralysis, but perhaps inability to locate that starting point and then never getting started. And I have been chewing on that. What is the first image? What is the first thing I want to say? So often that is much harder than the second or third or fourth thing.

Múlafossur, I think, is that starting point. This waterfall was the first image I ever saw of the Faroe Islands and it is the moment I fell in love with them and they captured my imagination. This waterfall stuck in my brain, keeping these isolated islands lodged in my brain for months, if not years, til I finally ended up there. It is not exaggeration to say it is this spot that led to me eventually being in this spot. I may not have ever ventured to the Faroes otherwise.

Múlafossur was not the first place I visited though. I don't think I made it to Gásadalur, where Múlafossur is located until my fourth or fifth day in the Faroes. I got there around sunset, though on that day it was a brooding overcast sky that fit these islands like a glove. Like many places in the Faroes, Múlafossur is not far as the car drives but at the same time it feels isolated. Everywhere in the Faroe Islands outside of Tórshavn (the capital city) and Klaksvík (the second largest city) feels isolated. The small village of Gásadalur you see above the falls sits alone in a small valley, ringed on three sides by mountains and the fourth by the ocean. There was not even a road connecting this village to the rest of the island until 2006. Prior to that you got here by walking or by boat. It still feels that way, the cramped, narrow, one-way tunnel does little to lessen that. But a lot of the experience was the weather and time of day I was there. With daylight dwindling and the tops of the nearby mountains glowering darkly from the low-hanging clouds, it felt like the rest of the world was far, far away.

I loved it. It was simultaneously different than I expected and all that much better.

I would be reaching for further words to describe this place, but thankfully I don't have to find them all, I can fill the gaps with images. I should also mention that working on these images has reawakened a deep yearning to return here. More so than I had expected, in fact.

Hasselblad 500C/M
Kodak Portra 400

Tags:   Kodak Portra 400 Hasselblad 500C/M Faroe Islands Gásadalur Múlafossur Vágar waterfall landscape film Medium Format North Atlantic

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Despite Múlafossur being the first image of the Faroe Islands I had ever seen, and the spark for my fascination for this North Atlantic archipelago, it was not the first place I visited on my first day there. I made the drive up to the village of Saksun because it seemed as good a place to start as any. I would come to discover in my stay on the Faroe Islands that a list of places to visit there is all well and good but in truth you can go just about anywhere here and be amazed for one reason or another.

Saksun is a village on the northern tip of the largest island of Streymoy. The capital city of Tórshavn sits at the southern tip of the same island and the drive between the two places only takes about 45 minutes. It is indicative of driving on the Faroes: there are no real long distances here. You can drive as far as possible from one side of the archipelago to the other in less than two hours. That is assuming you don't stop and not stopping is difficult to do here. Every bend in the road hugs gorgeous scenery and thank god for the frequent pullouts...

The drive up to Saksun was my first experience of this in the Faroes. Despite the 45 minute drive time, it probably took me twice that long to reach this village after frequent pullovers. The final several kilometers also introduced me to the one-lane roads common in the more "rural" sections of the Faroes where you have a single lane of traffic and small pullouts every 100m with the car having the pullout to their right cedes right away to oncoming vehicles. I cannot imagine what this must be like when the summer tourist season begins and frequent vehicles are making the trek out to places like Saksun. It made me glad I was visiting in the spring when I only saw three or four other vehicles my whole time out there.

The main draw to Saksun is its church. The second main draw is the black sand beach below it. But the other attraction is the waterfall behind the village (and behind where I am standing here) as well as the footpath that goes up and over the mountains to the village of Tjørnuvík on the other side. Hiking in the Faroe Islands is something else, and I will talk about it more in a future post. For today it is enough to share that I spent most of my time in Saksun on this path, going far up the side of the mountains and enjoying the view of the valley below. I made this image of Saksun either on the way up or down, I remember not which it was and love how it shows both how small these communities are as well as the landscape they sit within.

Hasselblad 500C/M
Kodak Portra 400

Tags:   Kodak Portra 400 Hasselblad 500C/M Saksun Streymoy Faroe Islands

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I really cannot adequately describe how much I enjoyed driving in the Faroe Islands. While there I did both a ton of hiking and a ton of driving and enjoyed both almost equally.

There are many factors that make driving around these islands so enjoyable. The most obvious is the landscape. It seems like every bend in the road brings some heart-stopping vista. I was glad the traffic was so light because I barely wanted to go the speed limit, preferring to take my time and marvel at the scenery around each corner. The land itself is amazing but thanks to the geography of these islands you constantly find yourself in different light or weather. The islands are shaped like giant fins coming out of the Atlantic, with the roads mostly circumnavigating these islands. But quite frequently you have tunnels that bore straight from one side of an island to the other. In a couple of kilometers you can go from heavy cloud cover to bright sun, or from drizzly rain to sunset skies.

Of course those aforementioned tunnels are an experience themselves. Many of the tunnels are one lane, dark, thoroughfares that cut right through the mountains. But the Faroe Islands are home to three subsea (soon to be four) tunnels that connect various islands. These tunnels are multiple lanes, bright, and dive deep down under the surface of the sea with their lowest points usually lit up by colored lights painting the tunnel walls red or blue or green while you whisk along at 80kmh under the surface of the sea. And they are long, at least the newest one is which takes over six minutes to drive through (I timed it) and has a roundabout two-thirds of the way along it. But then other tunnels are rocky and narrow with the frequent pullout for oncoming traffic that has you anxiously peering to the tunnel's end for oncoming headlights while minding the narrow clearance to either side of your rental car. In short, the tunnels themselves are one of the more memorable aspects of the drive here.

Then there is the open, empty nature of many of the roads. Other cars are not uncommon, but driving for kilometers without seeing another vehicle is also not uncommon, at least during the time of year I was there. I could pull over, get out, and it would be quiet - at least of traffic. I felt nicely alone, even standing alongside a major road like in this image.

I guess last, and I have mentioned this in a previous post, is the proximity of everywhere. No drive was over two hours, and most were well under an hour. It was fast to get everywhere, even if you were going slow. Or at least the drives themselves were so beautiful they never felt long.

I have kept a mental list of some of the most beautiful drives I have done in the US. The Going To The Sun Road, or the Road to Hana, or the Beartooth Hwy, or even the stretch of US 395 that runs from Burns to Lakeview here in my home state of Oregon. These have all stood out to me as exceptional. They stood out. None of the drives in the Faroes really stood out because they are all pretty exceptional. I suppose if I had to choose though I would point to the Oyggjarvegur scenic route that runs through the mountains above Tórshavn and the scenic route that also winds through the mountains between Eiði and Funningur (that as far as I can tell doesn't even have a name).

Anyway, those are my recollections and impressions from driving the Faroes. Some of them, at least.

Pentax 67
Cinestill 400D

Tags:   Pentax 67 Cinestill 400D Faroe Islands Eysturoy

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In planning my camera kit for this trip I really debated for a short while as to whether to take the Hasselblad or the Pentax 67. I had a gut hunch that I was really going to want the Pentax with its 45mm lens and 6:7 aspect ratio. The images I had seen of the Faroe Islands online convinced me that my Pentax 67 was going to fit in nicely there. But at the same time I had trouble imagining such a trip without the Hasselblad. If the Pentax is as close and natural to me as my left arm, my Hasselblad is my right arm. Taking both seemed like overkill, but leaving either at home seemed like a mistake. In the end I took the Pentax with just that 45mm wide angle and my Hasselblad with its 80mm and 150mm. When all was said and done, I feel confident I made the right decision. Yes, my bag was heavy going through airports, but when I had moments like this at the edge of the Hvithamar view I was so glad to have both of those cameras with me. But especially the Pentax. ;-) Weary shoulders will eventually recover.

Pentax 67
Kodak Portra 160

Tags:   Kodak Portra 160 Pentax 67 Faroe Islands Eysturoy landscape Medium Format 6x7 Gongutúrur

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In my previous post I was writing about the mental process I went through deciding whether to bring my Hasselblad or my Pentax 67 to the Faroe Islands. (Spoiler alert - I brought both). While those cameras do share some overlap I also packed them along with very different purposes in mind. Among other things, my Hasselblad is my long exposure camera. It has no need of batteries so there is no worry over battery drain while doing long exposure work. Plus my Pentax 67 is prone to some type of occasional internal flaring during these long exposures that happens just often enough to make me not trust it enough for such journeys.

Anyway, this is one of the images I made in the Faroes with my Hasselblad where it was fulfilling its purpose quite nicely.

I will add though that these islands are windy. I love wind. It is one of my favorite weathers. But by the time I had left here I had had my fill of wind for some time. Since I had opted to travel with just carry-on luggage I had left my large Manfrotto tripod at home and took a lightweight travel tripod instead. Normally it works just fine, but it would never be my first choice for holding a camera stable in a wind storm for long exposure work. During my stay in the Faroes I did a lot of long exposure work with this tripod and spent a lot of time huddled protectively over and around the setup like a mother bird, trying my best to shelter the camera from being buffeted by the ever-present winds. I was a bit nervous coming home not sure how many images would be lost to camera shake. I must be better at being a windbreak than I had given myself credit for as I didn't notice any images lost to blurriness. Anyway, I will have more to say about that wind in a later post.

Hasselblad 500C/M
Kodak Portra 400

Tags:   Kodak Portra 400 Hasselblad 500C/M Faroe Islands Trælanípa Vagar long exposure Medium Format

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