Iceland | Earth, Sea & Sky
A Fujifilm X-Photographer Story
Visual storytelling at the wild edges in collaboration with Fujifilm
A journey through Iceland’s wild edges
film shot by chris turner for Fujifilm
Iceland is a place where you meet the wildest edges of earth, sea, sky and self. I’ve been travelling here since 2014, in every season, and what I know is this: you don’t photograph Iceland, you enter into a conversation with her. The storms come, the light shifts in an instant. Aurora arrives on her own terms and makes you work hard to chase the liminal moments when she dances across the sky. This project, created in Iceland in collaboration with Fujifilm, is about that conversation. A focus on three lenses I reach for when earth, sea and sky each call for something different.
Shot on the FUJIFILM X-T5, this is the story of how I see, how I connect, and how I anticipate the moment before it arrives.
The Process
Intuition as creative practice
Iceland has shaped me as a storyteller. Over more than a decade of returning across different seasons, I’ve built an intimate, intuitive relationship with this landscape. Her geology, her weather patterns, her wildlife, her mythology. This knowledge lives in my body as much as my mind, and it’s what allows me to adapt fluidly when conditions shift, sensing the atmosphere before it’s arrived.
On this Iceland trip with Fujifilm, storms rewrote our plans more than once. In Iceland, you have to shift your thinking, it isn’t an obstacle, it’s the invitation, trusting in the alchemy of it all. Travelling with Fujifilm, the work became a collaboration unfolding in motion, responsive to everything as it unfolded and seeing the potential in moments no-one could have anticipated. We revised, we waited, we moved. And in that responsiveness, the most extraordinary frames arrived.
My storytelling approach is always rooted in the arc of earth, sea, sky and self. Each element carries its own energy. Its own quality of light, its own pace. So each called for a different lens.
Earth
shot on XF50-140mmF2.8 R LM OIS WR
Iceland’s earth is ancient and alive. Volcanic landscapes, frozen lava fields, geothermal steam rising from fissures in the ground. This is a landscape shaped by forces that predate human memory. To photograph it with any justice, you need reach with precision: the ability to compress layers. To pull distant drama into the frame, and to hold steady in the wind. It is easy to think that landscape photography calls for wide lenses, to capture as much of the scene as possible. But I love shooting landscapes with this focal length, it is a great storytelling lens, isolating detail but also still being able to capture more intimate frames without losing the sense of vastness. And the F2.8 aperture means you can shoot for a long time past sunset as light fades into dusk.
The XF50-140mmF2.8 is the lens I reach for when the land speaks in scale. The constant f/2.8 aperture gives me the control I need when light is low and shifting, which in Iceland is most of the time! The optical image stabilisation means I can hold a frame in a gusting headwind without sacrificing sharpness in photos and video. This is a landscape that rewards patience and persistence; this lens meets that energy and never misses a beat.
Sea
SHOT ON XF70-300mmF4-5.6 R LM OIS WR
The sea around Iceland is unlike any other water I’ve witnessed It is truly wild, a nation that lives in deep connection with the ocean. Orca move through these waters. Whales surface and disappear. The Atlantic swells arrive from thousands of miles away and meet the volcanic coastline with a force that echos in your chest as the waves crash and shape the wild edges of the island. When on the sea with whales, you never know where they’re going to surface and having a lens with focal lengths that can quickly respond to closer encounters
Wildlife photography at sea requires a lens that can reach without disturbing. That can lock focus on a fin breaking the surface and hold it. The XF70-300mmF4-5.6 gives me that range and more. 300mm equivalent reach with fast, quiet autofocus that is extraordinary for tracking movement in unpredictable conditions. My marine conservation work with Whale Wise and time spent in the field working alongside cetaceans means I read behaviour. I anticipate where an animal will surface next. The lens and that knowledge work together to capture the liminal moments the whales surface, a brief window into another world.
Sky
shot on XF16mmF1.4 R WR
The sky in Iceland is ever changing and when night falls, it opes up a window to the Universe. This trip served a challenging line up of conditions. A full moon making the luminous snowy landscapes almost look like daylight. A crystal clear night and very low aurora activity, followed by a night of active aurora and bands of snow storms closing the curtains on the window to the sky! You have to be ready. You have minutes, sometimes seconds, to make the frame before she shifts or disappears entirely. To respond to that, you need a fast lens with a wide aperture to gather every photon available. Those fleeting seconds where you press the shutter, waiting to see how the photons have painted onto your sensor, capturing the sky in its full, breathtaking sweep are like no other!
The XF16mmF1.4 is my aurora lens. f/1.4 pulls in extraordinary amounts of light at night, and the wide field of view means I can place the aurora in relationship to the landscape below. The lava fields, the sea, the horizon. In doing so, the image tells a complete story rather than just recording a spectacle. I’ve been chasing the northern lights long enough to know that the sky and earth in conversation with each other is always more powerful than either alone.
Deliverables
The film & the photographs
The full story of this collaboration lives in the film created with videographer Chris Turner. Shot on GFX ETERNA 55, alongside the photography captured across the three elements on the FUJIFILM X-T5. Together they document a story of what it feels like to be in Iceland. To stand inside a storm that rewrote the plan, to wait for an orca’s fin to break the surface, to watch the gap between snow storms sky ignite at midnight.
This is what visual storytelling at the wild edges looks like. The alchemy of whatever conditions arrive.
With thanks to Gisli and the Lakí Tours team for guiding us through Iceland’s terrain with such generosity and knowledge.
Explore more about my projects in partnership with Fujifilm here.
Want to learn to shoot in Iceland? Fujifilm School runs an Introduction to Landscape Photography holiday in Iceland: 19th – 25th October 2026.
Stills from the story
Stills from the epic film created by Chris Turner
Purpose-led work
at the wild edges
Visual storytelling, advocacy and leadership
rooted in care for people, place and planet
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Let’s tell it together
Visual stories of how we stay, experience, explore & protect the wild edges of earth, sea, sky & self.