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Iceland Re Do – Visiting My Iceland 2010 Files Again

January 2, 2022 By Kevin Raber

Lots and Lots Of Images

A damn made from icebergs at Jökulsárlón Iceberg Lagoon.

Happy New Year

It started on the Friday after Thanksgiving. The new Capture One Pro 22 had been released, and I was going through my RAID drive and revisiting my old sessions. I opened up the session from my Iceland 2 trips in 2010 and found that with some of the NEW tools in Capture One, I could improve the RAW editing, not to mention the files themselves.

I grabbed a cup of coffee and looked at the 2165 images I made on those two trips. As you are most aware, Iceland is a photographer’s dream. I have been fortunate enough to visit Iceland many times and know it intimately. Over the years, I have gotten to know many of the local photographers in Iceland and one of the most talented and also my guide for many trips and workshops in Daniel Bergmann. On this trip, Daniel was with me and it was one of the first we did together. I did two trips with Daniel in 2010. One with just the two of us and another with a workshop group. These images are a combination of both trips.

Looking Again Through Capture One 22

A portrait of me way back then with my Phase One camera, photo by Daniel Bergmann

Using Capture One 22, I opened the session and was prompted if I would like to run an update, which of course I did. I had already assigned color ratings and star ratings for images in this session many years ago. My star ratings are 3 stars for images that should be reviewed and possibly worked on, 4 stars for images that have been worked on and deemed good enough to keep, and 5 stars for outstanding images that are portfolio material. I reserved stars 1 and 2 for images that 1 are HDR shots to be worked on and 2 for pano images that need to be worked on. These 1 and 2 stars were images I paid attention to.

Capture One 22 has two new features allowing me to do HDR (Image Merging – Exposure Blending) from RAW files. and panorama stitching right in Capture One of many images assigned as pano element images. Each of these new features produces a new DNG file that can then be edited using Capture One tools. This is an incredible update as I used to have to take the images out of Capture One and stitch in Photoshop or use a third-party HDR program. Now everything can be done right on the RAW files. I know I will go through a lot of my other sessions and redoing my HDR and Pano images.

I can also do magic layer brushes, luminosity layers, color editing, Haze removal and so much more, besides the normal RAW editing tools

There are a lot of images in this article. In the caption, I’ll share a short bit about what I did to the files. In addition, I’ll include a few before and after slide-over images so you can see what I started with and what I ended with.

What’s Next

Capture One 22 now has magic layer brushes, Panorama Stitching, Image (HDR) Megring, Luminosity masks, dehaze and much more. — Capture One 22 now has magic layer brushes, Panorama Stitching, Image (HDR) Merging, Luminosity masks, dehaze, and much more.

I plan to make some new big prints for wall hanging. These will be 17×22 or larger. I also plan to make a two-part Portfolio Tin where I can showcase 60 images between the two tins. Some I’ll set aside for Social Media sharing. I’ll also be starting a master file for a future book on my images of Iceland. And, finally, I’ll be adding a few select images to my RaberEYES Storefront.

I do plan to go back and visit all my Iceland trips over the coming year and many other trips to the dozens of other places I have visited in my career. The new RAW processor capabilities of not only Capture One but Lightroom and others allow us to do so much in the RAW processing programs we could never do before.

I’ll be publishing some videos in the future showing how I do these edits, as well as maybe a few live Zoom webinars. I have an enormous list of projects, so stay tuned.

If you’d like to join me on an Iceland Photography Trip, please check out the information at Rockhopper Workshops.

I hope you enjoy the images below.

Iceland 2010 Images

If you are a Silver or Gold member, you can click on an image to see it larger. You can also use the dark mode if you’d like.

This was one of the first images I ever took in Iceland and I was just amazed by the steam coming out of the ground in this Geothermal area. As you can see by the before and after I worked with just about every tool in the toolbox. I used the Sky Enhance brush to improve the sky. Highlight recovery to hold detail in the steam and dehaze to give better contrast in the steamy- hazy environment. By the way, the smell was just awful but over the coming days and visits, you become accustomed to it.

church in vik — Inside the church on top of the hill in Vik. Sometimes it’s not always about the landscape. The inside of this church with natural light had its own beauty. I used the dodge and burn bushes as well as shadow recovery. I burned in the window and dodged the bible. The window was very bright and blown out in the original. I also burned in the ceiling area to accent the arch of the window

This is such a beautiful organ. The light from the window on the left lit it so well. I balance out the image with some dodging and burning. I also darkened the background a bit on the right.

Iceland landscape — No matter where you point your camera in Iceland, you can get a good shot. This one I darkened the left side since it was closest to the camera and was a bit overwhelming. I used the burn brush to do that, and I then used the Sky enhance brush to darken down the blown-out sky.

This shot looks down from a very steep hillside to the small creek below. It’s different in perspective and I like the way the lines converge.

The meandering creek leads to an interesting composition. I burned in the left hillside, which helps point the eye to the center of the creek as well as the path I wanted a viewer’s eye to take.

Another typical Iceland landscape. I used the dodge tool to lighten the area of the farm and sky enhance brush to improve the sky

Iceland was meant for pano. I used the Pano tool in Capture One to stitch 7 images together. Then I was able to crop and edit the end result which was a DNG file to my liking. The sky enhance brush helped fix the sky to what you see.

horse 1 — Nothing special about this processing-wise. I just love Icelandic horses. Daniel doesn’t, so I had to neg him to pull over so I could get some of these shots.

I think these horses look like rock stars

Such beauty, detailed close-up. These guys are so friendly, just like everyone in Iceland

This was the workshop group shot. We did some big and fun workshops back in the day. Everyone on this workshop got to use a Phase One camera. We still talk about the stories from this adventure.

This image was made at sunset and sunrise, which all happen about the same time at one point in the year. The light is amazing, to say the least, and no one but Daniel and I were there. I got down close to the river running out to the see from the iceberg lagoon. Used a 2-second exposure to catch the water moving. Then in Capture One did a lot of exposure work, masking in layers and color editor work to get the final shot. Dehaze was also used.

The iceberg LAgoon is very popular, mainly because it is dynamic and always in flux. Not to mention it is just great for sunset and sunrise photography.

god ray — Then you may be surprised when you have a moment like this. I darkened the top sky with a linear mask, used the color editor to pop the icebergs and burned down the sunrays just a little bit.

The icebergs from the lagoon are swept out to the ocean and the tide then lands them on a black sand beach. Could you ask for anything better?

As a photographer, you could spend all day just shooting icebergs in the lagoon. I was lucky for a day like this where there was no wind. I had such fun with reflections.

berg w — You could stand on the shore and photography these marvelous beats and hear cracking and splashing as these bergs slowly moved, melted, and broke up.

abstract 1 — Iceberg abstracts were fun too. There is so much to shoot. I love moving in close and exploring each berg. The light, and textures are amazing.

Look at the detail bere. How does nature do it?

I made a 30×30 inch print of this. It’s great to see people walk up to it and explore the details

This is one of my best-selling images. I have a 44×65 inch image of this hanging in my studio. It shows sunset and sunrise and was taken from the bridge on the lagoon. The sky turned red and reflected in the water. Using the dehaze tool, color editor, and a number of other tools in Capture One I was able to change this image into something special.

Waterfalls

My old and dear friend Michael Reichmann coined the acronym JAFWF (Just Another Fxxking Waterfall. If you like waterfalls then come to Iceland. As you can see by the images below I don’t always try to get just the waterfall but also bits and pieces of it using a long lens like the 100-400mm.

The amount of water going over these falls is mind-blowing. I used a long lens to capture the intersecting falls/. Then using the Dehaze tool, contrast, burning, and dodge brushes plus the sky enhance brush was able to make this go from bland to drama.

Geothermal Fields

Iceland is a hot island. As you know there are active volcanos and hundreds of geothermal fields. These fields are dangerous because of the gas and boiling mud and hot steam but with caution one can explore and find intense beauty. These are my reworked geothermal field images.

Shooting in these fields is difficult and you must be good at using levels, curves, dehaze, and clarity tools to bring out the most in an image.

I’m always amazed at nature and even in hostile environments, it finds its way to grow.

Self-portrait. Don’t fall into any of these holes as they are boiling mud.

Don’t you just love these textures and color?

Final Thoughts

While we still are somewhat slowed down, to say the least because of COVID it is a good time to dig through your older files and redo some of the old images and take them to a new level. Both Capture One and Lightroom have new features that make this a worthwhile endeavour and keep us busy until we can travel freely again. I have made quite the list of files and trips that I want to revisit. I’ll share more as I go through my files.

I hope you enjoyed these.

Thank You.

Kevin Raber
January 2022

Kevin Raber
Indianapolis, IN

Photography is my passion and has been for5 0 plus years. My career in photography has allowed me to travel the world, meet some of the most interesting people on the planet and see things I could never have dreamed of. My goal is to share the passion of picture taking through photographs and teaching with as many people as I can, hoping it brings them as much joy and happiness as it has me. I do this through photoPXL.com, this site, as well as Rockhopper Workshops, and other projects, as well as teaching as Artist In Residence at the Indianapolis Art Center.

Tagged With: capture one, Iceland Workshop, Capture One 22, Iceland

Article Type: Tutorials, Columns, MISC

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