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The Sun Voyager sculpture in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Details Nikon D800 / ISO 100 / f/8 / 1/1s / Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 @ 32mm / Location: Reykjavík, Iceland

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I don't want to post too many Iceland photos in a row (no matter how tempting it is), so here is a shot from another amazing country beginning with 'I'.

Indonesia.

This was taken at sunrise during a special tour put on by my hotel. As it was winter, it was pretty quiet, so that suited me down to the ground.

I think this is Mount Merapi in the distance, but this temple is surrounded by nine volcanoes, so it's anyone's guess!

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I spent ages researching a 10-stop ND filter for my Nikon 14-24mm lens and discovered that they're hard to come by, with decent ones being even more rare.

Thankfully I found one I thought I would be happy with and took it out for a test drive.

This was a week or two before my trip to Iceland, so I wanted to take my new gear out for a bit of a test run around London. I wasn't going to post this shot, but it's grown on me, so here you go.

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You may be sick of my Iceland photos already, but I still haven't posted a proper shot of the Northern Lights; the Aurora Borealis.

Time to rectify that.

We had just spend hours photographing an amazing display of the lights and were trying to find somewhere to camp (i.e. park the van). We found this little lay-by surround by mountains and, as it was after 02:00 and were were tired and hungry, we pulled over and made some food.

The lights here were quite quiet, but I wanted to see where exactly we where (it was total darkness), so I took some photos of the surrounding area. When I was doing this, the Aurora started up again with another amazing display.

Luckily the surrounding mountains were spectacular.

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The beauty of driving around Iceland is that you can head ten minutes down the road and the landscape will completely change into something else, equally amazing as what you've just seen.

I don't mean this happens now and again, but pretty much every ten minutes. It really is quite outstanding.

We had spent the night shooting an amazing aurora display and then slept in the middle of nowhere in the back of the van. Despite having many, many layers on and being in a reasonably thick sleeping bag, I woke up shivering in the middle of the night.

Feeling close to death due to lack of sleep, we jumped in Lindsay Lo-van (our camper van with a drawing of Lindsay Lohan on the side) and headed over the hill, only to be confronted by this beautiful sunrise and lava field.

We of course had to stop for about 40 mins and take photos.

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This is a United States Navy Dakota which crashed on the black sands of Iceland in 1973. It's a very surreal sight, but worth seeing.

Sadly it's a bit of a trek to get to.

We knew vaguely where this was, but still decided to get some GPS co-ordinates from our friend Mike Murphy to help us on our way. It was only about 2-3 kilometres from the road, but it ended up being a long walk due to the soft, spongy gravel/sand of the 'beach'.

After a short shoot, with a very obliging sunset and sky, we had to do the whole walk again, but in reverse. (I mean back to the van from the plane, not walking backwards).

It's certainly possible to drive here if you have a 4x4, but I wouldn't recommend doing it in a normal vehicle in case you get stuck.

Thanks to my friend Carol for the title suggestion.

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For such a large city, the centre of Singapore can be pretty quiet sometimes.

I had wandered down to the marina for sunrise I was shortly confronted by this fantastic blue hour. Apart from one other photographer who quickly disappeared, I was the only person around.

This provided a love sense of peace and serenity. I happily walked around picking out different compositions and waiting for the sun to rise up.

Thankfully, probably due to the rainy season, this blue hour had some very interesting clouds; I hate clear skies, even during blue hour or sunrise / sunset.

The title of this photo come from the nickname of Singapore, the Lion City, which is a direct translation from the Malay word Singapura.

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Have you ever dreamed about getting a waterfall, the Milky Way and the Aurora Borealis in the same photograph? To be honest, I haven't, as it seemed a bit silly.

Turns out, I've managed to capture all these things anyway.

I'm just back from eight days in Iceland with my photography travel buddy Greg Annandale where we travelled around the whole of the island in a van with Lindsay Lohan on the side of it. We called it the Lindsay Lo-van.

This has benefits and drawbacks. The main advantage is that we can sleep anywhere and get around nearly the whole of Iceland at a moments notice. The main disadvantage is that sleeping in Iceland in winter in the back of a metal van is very, very, very cold. We had temperatures of around -12 degrees Celsius, with the wind chill bringing that down to around -20.

Anyway, on one clear evening, we decided to head up to Gullfoss, one of the biggest tourist attractions in Iceland and do some night-time shooting. The lack of tourists was nice, but the freezing 04:00 temperatures and spray from the waterfall meant that we had ice forming all over our equipment.

Expect a lot more Iceland photos over the next few weeks and months!

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Most of my Indonesia shots seem to be landscapes and temples.

Here is one of my only cityscapes, taken during a rooftop session with Franciscus Tan, Adri Syahfril Koto Piliang and Citra Dita Valentin a few months ago. It was a pretty weird sky.

With so many things going on, it was quite a hard shot to compose, but I ended up going with this one. Let me know what you think.

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Compared with the UK, Malaysia always seems to have beautiful sunsets and sunrises. Even when I went during rainy season, 100% of sunrises and 80% of sunsets were fantastic.

This particular sunset was when I was standing in the ocean to the north of Penang Island at a place called Batu Ferringhi.

Due to this being Malaysia, the water is always warm, so I could happily wade out to quite some depth (taking care not to stand on any crabs).

The sunset started out weak, but then broke through the clouds and gave me all sorts of different colours and patterns on the storm clouds overhead. At one point, the colours in the clouds ended abruptly at a huge black cloud in which you could see lightning strikes; very surreal combination.

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There is an iconic view of Hong Kong, one which I have taken myself. It's from this exact spot, but I decided to also post a nice day-time one as well.

Although not uncommon, shots at this time from the peak are fewer and further between than the night photographs.

Myself and Greg had got up to the viewing point early, as we always do. As the sun started setting, we started shooting a few frames. Even though the sun was behind us, out of frame, there was still some lovely light on the city, stretching back into Kowloon.

Thankfully there were also a few clouds, otherwise the sky would have been mighty dull.

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This is definitely one of the most alien landscapes I've ever visited; A giant crater containing a desert tundra and four volcanoes.

To get to the viewpoint for sunrise, you need to get up at around 03:00. We decided to get up a bit earlier to see what the sky was like.

Sadly, due to it being rainy season, it was very cloudy. Every now and again, we (myself and Fran) got a break in the clouds and it was nice to see the stars peeking through.

Although there was no Milky Way, I quite enjoy the layers created in this photo.

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This was definitely one of the coolest and most photogenic places in Kuala Lumpur, the Batu Caves.

As well as some stunning scenery and cool (if somewhat angry) monkeys, this cave also contains a Hindu temple.

Although most people who increase the dynamic range in photos like to get every single last bit of detail out of it, I like to develop for the mood of the image. In this case, I could have shown the top of the cave and the sky, as I took 9 exposures, but I quite liked the way the image fades to a blown out white.

You might disagree, but I prefer this approach.

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When I was at home in Belfast over christmas, I wanted to get up to the Giant's Causeway for some sunrise photo opportunities. Sadly the weather was awful for most of the time.

On my final chance, I thought I'd risk it. It was freezing, but stayed reasonably dry. Until I actually started taking pictures.

The wind really picked up and the rain was hitting me from all directions. I had to rest a lot of my weight on the tripod to stop it getting blown over. The benefit was some great waves crashing over the famous hexagonal rocks of the causeway.

Technical info

This is actually about 6 photos in one. Although the waves were all in the space of about 20 seconds, they didn't quite all get captured in the one frame. I added them back in, plus a long exposure with my 10-stop neutral density filter for the rocks in the middle of the outcrop.

Finally I upped the contrast and made it monochrome for a more dramatic feel.

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There are two things that I've become a fan of recently; long exposures during sunrise or sunset and the manual blending of images.

Luckily, this photo combines both of these loves!

I had wandered through town at about 05:30 and arrived at Marina Bay, which luckily only took me 10 minutes due to my reasonably central location near Clarke Quay.

I had figured this location would be very popular with photographers, but there was only one other guy there for sunrise. I took a few standard shots and then stuck on my 10-stop neutral density filter; something I seem to do during most sessions now (apart from night-time ones, obviously).

Once I spent a few minutes getting some shots of this fantastic sunrise, I had another walk, this time around the bay, back towards town. As I arrived around the corner, about 30 people arrived for a photowalk. You'd think that if you're going for a very early morning photowalk, you wouldn't arrive 10 minutes after sunrise?!

Technical Info

This was two LE shots, one at 100 seconds and one at 180 seconds. These were manually blended together using masking (layer, not luminance this time) to compensate for some blown out areas around the sun.

More technical info

As some of you might have heard, I have now sold all my Canon gear and gone to Nikon. I'm not a particular fan boy of either; both systems have their good and bad points. I was looking to upgrade my year and a half old, second hand, Canon 5D MKII. I looked into getting another MKII, a MKIII or a Nikon D800.

After a lot of consideration about what I needed and my style of shooting, I settled on the D800. This is currently the best tool for the job (at least my job), plus it now allows me to shoot with the Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 - arguably the best ultra-wide-angle in the world.

To complete the lens line-up, I also have a 28-300mm, 50mm f/1.4 and 85mm f/1.8.

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This was very, very early in the morning. Myself and Greg had arisen at about 04:00 and Sam drove us to this point on the river.

I pulled out the camera and tried shooting this cormorant fisherman, but it was so humid, even at this time in the morning, that my lens started fogging up.

Thankfully, the condensation actually gave this quite pleasing burst of light from the lamp. There is hardly any processing done to this shot, just some white balance, sharpening and denoising.

I managed to get another shot as he set off down the river...

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Yes, I know it's a bit of an arty title, but then again, it's a bit of an arty shot!

This is actually a rarely taken scene from a hugely popular location - Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park in Indonesia, containing Mount Bromo, a currently active volcano.

Sometimes, where there is a violent volcanic eruption, the ground left can collapse, leaving a massive crater knows as a caldera. In this particular one, the Tengger Caldera, it also left five smaller volcanoes in the middle of it; Mount Bromo being the most popular of these.

The land inside the caldera is mostly barren landscape, known as The Sea of Sand, the edges of which can rise up to 600 metres. It was on one of these high edges that I saw this wonderful scene.

Everyone was busy snapping away at the sunrise hitting Mount Bromo (and the other volcanoes) in the middle, whereas I had turned my back to see what was happening behind us.

The low, rising sun was streaming across this tree-filled plain on the lush ground surrounding the caldera. That, coupled with the low-lying clouds in the basin meant that the beams of light from between the trees became very prominent.

At the time when I took this shot, I knew I'd like it, but I wasn't too sure how to process it. I tried black and white first and bingo, that was the one. This is pretty much straight out of camera with just some monochroming, slight denoising, slight selective sharpening and some contrast work.

I think this shot is a love it or hate it shot, but I hope you love it as I do!

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My first stop on my tour of South East Asia was Malaysia and my first stop in this country was the capital, Kuala Lumpur.

After researching lots of shots of this fantastic city, I had decided that I had to get the iconic shot of the Petronas Towers (sometimes called the Twin Towers) during the blue hour.

There are very few places to get a good angle and even fewer that are publicly accessible. The best one I managed to find was The Traders Hotel. On the 33rd floor of this is the SkyBar; a fancy, but relaxed bar with a swimming pool right in the middle of it.

Even better (for me) than mid-drink swimming was the massive open windows that faced out towards the Petronas Towers. Although you're not allowed tripods here, the windows, when open, actually form a ledge about two feet wide.

Using a stabilising platform carefully crafted out of my long trousers (for mosque work) and spare shirt, I was able to have my camera steady enough to get seven night-time brackets of the KL skyline.

Technical Stuffs

This was an HDR composed of seven exposures, from -3 EV to +3EV. These were processed in Photomatix, then the original exposures were gradually blended through manually in Photoshop. Areas like the sky and ground are probably 90% one exposure (although not the same exposure).

This was finished off by a lot of colour correction to make it vibrant, but not to make it look wholly unnatural. Nik Software's Viveza was also used to tweak particular parts of the image to my liking.

This is definitely one photo that I'll have mounted and put on my wall at home! (If you want, you can also buy a print of Kuala Lumpur, with plenty of options of materials and sizes).

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Singapore is a photographer's paradise. It's full of amazing architecture, often has amazing sunsets and sunrises due to being in the tropics and also has cool things like lasers shows.

Thankfully one of these laser shows happens twice a night at the Marina Bay Sands and I took this chance to capture it.

I was out walking with my good friend of over a decade, Celia. She has been living and working in Singapore for a number of years and was giving me the lowdown. We had reached the marina / bay and she had to take a phone call, so I saw this as an opportunity and nipped down to the water's edge.

I set up at my (new, awesome, 3 Legged Thing) tripod and only had to wait about 5 minutes for the lasers to start up. It's not a particularly long show, but I snapped away continuously all the way through it, hoping to capture a nice array of beams.

Now onto the slightly more technical information. This photo is actually about five exposures manually blended together. A main shot, one for the building lights along the waterfront, a couple for the lasers from the Marina Bay Sands itself and one for the lasers from the Art Science Museum on the left.

These were all blended together using a number of various methods in Photoshop. Let me know what you think of the result!

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On this tour of South East Asia, I think I was most looking forward to seeing Indonesia. I'm not entirely sure why, I guess it has more of an exotic and mystical feeling to it than Malaysia and certainly Singapore.

I wanted the highlight of the trip to be Borobudur. I'd seen this temple in books years ago and had instantly wanted to visit there. Finally I got the chance.

This place was pretty darn special. I went during the off-season and I can recommend this to everyone. During the peak season, a guide told me that they sell over 4000 tickets a day and sometimes 1000 people can be in the complex at once. When I got the special sunrise ticket, I was one of about 15 people.

When I took this shot, I had bought the sunset ticket. The downside was that because it was rainy season, it was drizzling and cloudy. The upside? I was the only person at the temple and that is pretty priceless.

It was getting increasingly dark, but the sky has this amazing blue tone to it. I couldn't see too much, but when you buy your ticket, they give you a flashlight to use (and keep). I was shining this to help me focus and decided that I would look cool to do a bit of light-painting on the bells (and Buddha statues, but that's a different photo).

Just as I finished up here, the rain came on heavily, then I got picked up by security. On the back of his moped. He gave me a lift to my hotel door; how nice! Everyone I met here, and indeed the whole country, went out of their way to help you out.

This was one of the exclusive images in my 2013 Travel Calendar which is still well worth buying!

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