ICE, SKIN AND LAVA

The light that does not leave

In July the Icelandic sun does not set so much as lean. A single evening holds hours of changing colour without ever handing over to darkness — which means a sequence can develop the way a conversation does, one exposure answering the last, instead of racing a closing window. Slow down to the pace the sky is already keeping.

Skin against stone

Black sand, wet lava and ice each return light differently, and none of them return it the way skin does. Do not correct that disagreement in post — it is the picture. Direction here means matching working time to the body, not the body to the shot list: shelter between sequences, short exposures to cold ground, presence asked for, endurance never assumed.

The travel diary

Our age hands us machines and calls them memory. They are fast, and the journey is not. The journey asks for the opposite of speed: it asks for pauses, for halts, for the hours when the body rests and the mind catches up with where it has been.

Carry a notebook, and write in it by hand. There are moments on every journey when you find yourself alone, for an instant, before the immensity in front of you. It is then that thoughts arrive which will never come again, and which no screen will keep for you. Fix them on the page, or they scatter into the dust, the sun and the wind of the day, and are lost.

A gift of your own images

Most of the advice I can give you is obvious. Protect your equipment. Keep your socks and shirts away from the dust, because pulling on a clean, fresh shirt is always a pleasure. Any traveller knows these things, and perhaps you know them already. I say them not to teach, but because a teacher leads by example.

But there is one thing I have learned over the years that I do not impose on you: I recommend it, with force. If you wish to build a real relationship with the people you meet, a gesture of tenderness, a gift, is the surest way. Travellers have always carried gifts to the peoples and the strangers who received them. And what is the most precious gift a photographer can give? An image.

My suggestion is simple. Take one of those small photo albums, ten by fifteen, and fill it with the pictures you love most, printed small. Give them to the people you meet along the way. Write on them with a suitable pen: hello, your name, thank you, whatever you wish. The print becomes a personal object, made for that person alone. It costs you nothing, and it is an extraordinarily powerful gesture.

And it will raise you onto another scale as a human being. You will no longer be someone who arrives, takes an image and leaves. You will be someone who gives something back, who leaves a trace of gratitude instead of only carrying one away. The people before your lens feel that difference at once, and they meet you as a person, not as a camera. That is where the finest photographs are born, and something more than photographs: a bond.

Warm skin, pale ice and volcanic ground do not enter a photograph with equal weight. Each reflects light differently; each changes the way we perceive the human figure. In Iceland, we will learn to compose these relationships with the attention the body and the landscape both require.

A figure among the elements

Working with our models, you will develop images through conversation, position and gesture. We will examine how a figure alters the scale of a lava field, how clothing moves in wind and how a small area of skin can hold the eye within a dark landscape.

Direction will include preparing the frame before asking the model to enter it. You will learn to communicate a clear intention, make efficient decisions and adapt the session to her comfort and the changing conditions.

Exposure across ice, skin and lava

We will compare incident and spot readings, then relate them to the camera's histogram and the range of the recording medium. Pale ice and dark volcanic surfaces can lead to very different exposure decisions within the same composition. You will learn to choose which values carry the image and preserve the transitions that matter.

Shutter speed will be considered through the movement of water, fabric and the model. Focus, depth of field and viewpoint will determine whether the surrounding terrain feels close, distant or inseparable from the figure.

Working at the Edge of Exposure

In Iceland, the body meets wind, cold, water, black earth and a light that can change before the photographer has completed a thought. A model may appear motionless in the final image while making a considerable physical effort to remain there.

For this reason, preparation is not merely technical. It is an ethical responsibility.

Our models are professional collaborators. Their presence, experience and interpretation are part of the work. They are not equipment, landscape elements or bodies available beyond the agreed session.

Directing with Precision

Ask clearly and work efficiently.

Describe the gesture, movement or relationship with the landscape that you wish to explore. Allow the model to respond and contribute. She may accept, change or refuse any proposal.

Never touch her to correct a pose or adjust clothing without first asking. No request is more important than her physical comfort or personal boundary.

Before the model enters the frame, the camera should be ready. Exposure, lens, position and basic lighting must already have been considered.

Nudity in a Cold Landscape

If nudity forms part of a session, it will be used deliberately and for short periods. It is not proof of courage, either for the photographer or the model.

The model decides what she is comfortable revealing, the positions she will accept and the moment at which the sequence ends. Consent is specific and reversible.

Covering garments, towels and warm clothing remain within immediate reach. When the model covers herself, every camera is lowered. There are no opportunistic final frames.

Weather Determines the Session

Wind chill, wet ground, unstable lava, cold water and sudden weather changes may shorten or cancel a sequence. These decisions are not failures. They are part of working intelligently in Iceland.

No model will be asked to stand on unsafe rock, enter water without an agreed plan or remain exposed while photographers experiment. Sessions will be brief, deliberate and interrupted frequently for warmth and recovery.

The person is protected first; equipment and photographs come afterwards.

Privacy and Use of Images

Models are not photographed while changing, resting, warming themselves, eating or moving privately between locations. Mobile phones, video, instant cameras and behind-the-scenes material follow the same rule.

Speak as you would to any professional colleague. Sexual comments, jokes about the body, intrusive questions or personal invitations are incompatible with the workshop.

The release agreement governs portfolios, exhibitions, editorial use and social media. Responsibility does not end when the files leave the camera.

Cold makes every unnecessary minute visible. Respect means being prepared enough not to waste the model’s strength.

The arrival · Keflavík

The arrival night is offered by London Photographic Workshop, allowing the group to meet close to the international airport before the photographic journey begins. A welcome dinner is also offered that evening: the first shared table and the practical opening of the week.

A moving base

The accommodation plan will follow the geography of the workshop rather than require the group to return to one distant hotel every night. Carefully selected bases in the south-west and along the southern route will reduce unnecessary driving and protect the hours of best light.

Warmth as part of the method

In Iceland, accommodation is not merely where the day ends. It provides drying space, reliable heating, equipment charging and a protected interval in which models and photographers can recover between demanding exterior sessions.

Iceland is internationally accessible through Keflavík Airport, where the group journey begins. Participants will receive the exact meeting point and transfer arrangements before departure. If your arrival falls outside the principal collection window, we will help you identify the most practical way to join the group.

The workshop travels by comfortable private vehicle, using routes selected according to weather, road conditions and safe access. The published itinerary describes the intended photographic chapters rather than an inflexible sequence; Iceland may require locations or timings to change at short notice.

No long hikes are planned, but several locations involve short approaches over ice, black sand or uneven volcanic ground. Local guides and specialist operators will be used wherever glacier access or other controlled environments require them.

Strong wind, rain, cold and rapidly changing visibility are normal possibilities. The welfare of the three models determines the duration and form of every outdoor session. Warm-up periods, protective clothing between frames and alternative interior work are built into the production method.

Clear skies and access to ice formations can never be guaranteed. The workshop follows the conditions that actually exist, treating weather not as a failed plan but as one of the principal authors of the image.

In Iceland, we follow the light with the comfort of a thoughtfully planned journey. We will travel in VIP vans, such as high-specification Mercedes Sprinters or Vito, aiming to get as close as possible to our photographic locations where permitted access and conditions allow: less distance with equipment on our shoulders, more time to observe and photograph. No long hikes are planned.

A few less readily accessible locations may involve short walks, from around thirty minutes to a planned maximum of one hour, along routes selected to be mostly level or gently sloping. Natural ground can still be uneven or slippery, so suitable footwear and protection from wind and rain are recommended. Access and routes will be assessed according to the weather and conditions at the time.

If you have specific mobility needs, speak to us before booking so that we can review the itinerary together.

After leaving Iceland, where skin met glacier, lava and black earth beneath North Atlantic light, the images ask to return to those who held that elemental encounter together.

I did not include six months of post-workshop contact by chance, nor as a simple service.

Many years ago, I was teaching an online course that could easily have felt impersonal. Instead, when it ended, the group did not want to dissolve. We had never all sat around the same table, yet years later we are still a living community. From that experience came conversations, magazines, books, friendships and shared ways of looking.

It taught me how valuable a small circle of people can be when they have lived and worked through an experience together.

For this reason, every workshop includes six months of continued contact at no additional cost, and those months are where the photographs are carried to their end, together. A private group keeps the images moving between us: feedback, and a tuition that goes on, fed by cultural prompts — a book, an image, a thought, an exhibition, an occasion that opens a new direction. Each of you brings your images to a master file ready for fine print, and then we sit down, one to one, before the finished work. Then the group meets again, and there is a particular pleasure in it: seeing how far each of us has travelled since we parted. A Second Eye, an editor or a curator, reads the work as the profession reads it. And the work takes form, a collective book or a zine, depending on the event, and a public life, on a gallery wall or in the pages of Follow the Light. The images do not go back into a drawer. They go out into the world, and they go out together.

The event ends. The adventure in photography begins.