Matt and Sayde's great big, landscape loving, road trip having, honeymoon - babymoon adventure in Iceland // Victoria Wedding Photographers
Way back when Matt and I first started talking and getting to know each other as friends, we talked mostly about photography, and camera stuff in general. As time went on we chatted more about our hobbies, our childhoods, and things we had hoped to accomplish and do in the future - bucket lists, if you will. One of the things that embodied all of those things was the experience of past travels, and dream of future travel. We made lists of all the places we wanted to visit, and shared photos of interesting landscapes from places we wanted to see. Norway, Croatia, Australia, and beyond. One place that came up in almost every conversation and photo share session was Iceland, which crept quickly to the top of both of our lists of must-see places. Fast forward four years to 2016; we were getting married and we were planning a honeymoon to Iceland. For those who don't know, 2016 was an eventful year for us as we moved to Vancouver Island, worked hard to establish our wedding photography in Victoria, and then got married ourselves. We decided to wait a year and take our dream honeymoon in a less busy times!
With this postponement of our honeymoon came the most wonderful opportunity: photographing a series of destination elopements in Iceland. Perfect! Not only would be be travelling, meeting interesting people, and photographing a place we'd been dying to see for years, but we'd also get the opportunity to get to know, and photograph, adventurous couples who were as filled with Iceland wanderlust as we are. You can find each of their elopements in our blog.
This post however is about our personal trip around Iceland in the days leading up to the elopements we photographed. We started our road trip in Reykjavik and travelled counterclockwise around the ring road, stopping everywhere that made our jaws dropped. Our jaws dropped almost every ten minutes down the road. We were awestruck not only by the striking, and often times surreal, landscapes, but also by the way we often felt like we were the only people there, the way the sun hung so low along the horizon on autumn days that it seemed like sunset all the time, and the way the northern lights danced like rivers through the sky at night. So many times we found ourselves staring, or gasping, and asking out loud, "Could this possibly be real?!", as we tried to pinch ourselves awake from what felt like dreams.
Without further adieu (and because I promised Matt I wouldn't write a paragraph for each photo about the geology of each location, and the saga histories that revolve around them), here's a few highlights from our trip! Make sure to check out the drone video at the bottom as well!
Clouds over Reykjavik.
Taking pictures of Matt taking pictures.
Making some friends.
Gullfoss, along the Golden Circle.
Sayde overlooking Faxifoss.
Matt makes a break for the black sand beaches.
Flying over Reykjanes.
Road selfies are the road-trippingest selfies!
Dramatic clouds and lighthouses galore.
Tiny man, big cliffs.
Matt checking out Seljalandsfoss.
Birds eye view of Seljalandsfoss.
Pregnant photographer portrait of a pregnant Icelandic horse.
Sayde and the sunshine.
Matt at the end of a rainbow, at the bottom of Skogafoss.
Overlooking expanses of black sand beach under the Dyrholaey cliffs.
Dyrholaey.
Little Matt, biiiig waves!
Can you spot Sayde?
Watching the northern lights from our hotel room, and FossHotel.
Tiny Sayde perched on canyon cliffs.
Iceland in a nutshell: sheep and waterfalls.
Dodging puddles, or auditioning for a Gap ad?
Too many cameras to juggle. It is a real struggle.
Never enough Icelandic horses.
Matt fighting the wind!
So much mist at Godafoss.
Matt perched over Berserkjahraun lava feild.
The very famous, very photogenic Kirkjufell.
Sayde controls the ocean, just so you know.
We also made a video featuring footage from our drone throughout Iceland! Check that out below: