Uri Golman – A tale from the land of fire and ice.

Uri Golman is a award winning Danish nature photographer specialized in documenting conservation issues in the Arctic. He has photographed and written two books on the subject. The first one called Greenland – Images of Arctic Nature (2007) and the second one called Arctic Light – Photographs from Greenland and the Frozen North (2009). He is an associate member of ILCP (International League of Conservation Photographers) and has just spent the last one and a half year away from his normal working ground photographing for a bookproject on wildlife and conservation in India.
Now he is returning to the Arctic once more to take on the task of describing the effects of global warming seen trough the eyes of the arctic fox. The following story is Uri’s own account from his first trip to Iceland in April this year. A trip where plans had to be changed due to the effect of an erupting volcano.

Fire and Ice

Change of plans
I have recently returned from Iceland from what had unexpectedly become one of the most exciting photographic adventures of my life.
I am currently working on a project in the Arctic called The Arctic Fox Project on which I am following the life of the Arctic Fox in different Arctic regions to show the effects of global warming in the Arctic and Sub Arctic regions and how this affects this wonderful animal. I have long dreamt about being able to dedicate time working on just a single species and I am happy to finally do so.
National Geographic Nordic and Canon partner the project, so naturally I was hopeful to bring home some good shots from my first trip there. I had planned to meet up in Reykjavik with German filmmaker Tobias Mennle and head on to the far northwestern corner of Iceland to get some winter shots for my story. But just two days before I was meant to leave a volcano on the Eyjafjallajökul glacier in Iceland erupted.
With Icelands many volcanoes, I had already thought about the possibility of what an erupting volcano might bring to the story but had put the idea away as the chance of that happening within the project timeline was almost zero. But this thing was really happening and I had’nt even started on my first trip.
A quick phone call with Tobias determined that we were about to change our plans and focus on the volcano.

Two days later I was in Reykjavik sitting on a small café drinking coffee doing the waiting game of nature photography. The winds in Iceland were quite hard and according to the helicopter pilot, trying for us to ascend would be crazy. So we spent the day visiting Reykjavik University to get some more in depth knowledge about the volcano. We asked one of the professors there about the dangers of working on the site and he politely tried to suppress his laughing while explaining us that according to their measurements the pressure was still building around the place and another and larger eruption would be eminent. He ended his short lecture by advising us to at least wear some helmets. This way we would be a little safer if we got hit in the head by any flying rocks…

An amazing view
The next day and after a short stop to a builders market I was sitting in the helicopter flying over the beautiful Thorsmörk valley. Steam was coming up in large fumaroles from where lava met with the glacial ice and I was trying to get some good shots of the incredible landscape outside of my window. Although I was excited about going to the volcano winter landscapes have a very relaxing effect on me and just looking at them brings me into a sort of meditative state of mind. I was thoroughly enjoying the flight and the view when suddenly I heard the crackling sound of Tobias voice in my headphones. “Wow Uri take a look at that” I looked right and saw an amazing sight. We had just flown over a ridge and out there just about 300 meters away from us were four columns of fire and lave shooting about 80 – 100 meter into the air. Around the eruption was an icy plateau covered in ashes for several hundreds meters in each direction.

On the ground I quickly picked my gear out from the helicopters hatch and with the rotors still running we kneed on the ground as our pilot took off again.
As soon as the helicopter was away we climbed a small hill and had a fantastic view of the eruption. The sound was amazing, a deep bass sound not much different from the sound of waves hitting a rocky coast but more in slow motion.

I put up my tripod fixed a Canon 70-200mm to one camera and a 500mm to my other and started shooting. I only had about two hours until the pick up but my mind quickly started thinking about all the technical details instead. There were so many motives to work with and from where I was standing I could feel the heat from the eruption. As I stood there I felt closer to mother nature than ever before, I realised that we will never be able to control the power of this planet but can only watch in awe when something like this is happening. Suddenly as to prove my point a helicopter with a cameraman flew came in from the right very close to the eruption itself. It looked like something straight out of an American B movie or Armageddon as the helicopter was backed by the huge amount of lave spraying into the air. I had already metered of the lave so the helicopter was a natural silhouette and although I rarely photograph things with human structures in the frame I couldn’t help it as the scene was just to crazy to let it go.

That night as we had a burger at the hotel we changed the plans yet again. We were going to cancel the foxes for this time and spend our time on this natural wonder. The foxes would still be there for another time. So for the next week we spent all our time photographing and filming in the area when the weather was right and when it wasn’t we headed of the Jokullsarlon – a small glacial lagoon with beautiful icebergs to work on the landscapes there.

Back on the Volcano
We had quickly found out that the “blue hour” and the time going into the night was the best for volcano photography and filming as the natural red colours showed up even more strongly. After a mile long hike along the lava stream we had found some good spots and on the last day we decided to take a super jeep up to the volcano site. Icelandic super jeeps are rebuild cars with massive tires that can climb very steep glacial walls by extracting air from their powerful tires and thus giving them more traction.
The jeep made it possible for us to cover a great area in short time and we started out heading for some lavafalls where the lave flow dropped into the Thorsmörk valley. To stand at the valleys edge was an experience out of this world. There right in front of me I saw how the lave flow dropped about 80 meters like waterfalls into a gully filled with molten lava. Orange coloured rocks, the sizes of large cars were rolling down the hillside and hot air hit my face as I looked over the edge. This time I had more time to work on my composition and photography and walked the edge several times to look for good angles.
It was a fantastic day and we were lucky with the weather. I got all the shots I wanted and around 10 o’clock in the evening we headed back home.

A different perspective

It had been a trip full of excitement and adventurous experiences and loads of work. When I finally got into my seat at the airplane taking me back home I immediately fell a sleep. I didn’t even notice the food and didn’t wake up until the plane touched ground in Copenhagen.

Uri Golman – The Vulcano from Gitzo on Vimeo.

I did not have a single shot of the foxes that I came for but the trip had been a great success anyway.
Just a few days later a second and even larger eruption happened close to the site where we had been photographing. The smoke from this eruption put most flights in Europe to an immediate halt that lasted for two weeks.

Now as I sit here and write this article I am already planning for my next trip to Iceland in July. I am going for the foxes again and hopefully this time I will get some shots of the main subject of my story. But then again, as a photographer, sometimes you have to be where the story takes you and not where you want to take the story.

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