Icebergs and Technology

Fall, September 2017 to be exact, I’m on the trip of a lifetime in Iceland nearing the final days and I’m about to reach Jökulsárlón a glacier lagoon that promises up close pictures of icebergs slowly floating to the sea.

Challenges – the weather is the worst I seen since arrive in this wondrous country, it’s raining, foggy, dark and cold. Worse my camera is slowly but surely dying after being dropped earlier in the trip.

In hopes that something, anything will magically appear on the memory card when I get home I capture a few dozen images trying to keep the lens dry and spot free.

Arriving home the shots are bad. Really bad. The spots on the lens are bad enough, the fog is thick and the colors are flat but worse by this point the sensor of the camera is littered with pieces of what turned out to be the edges of a lens that shattered when dropped.

I almost never delete photos, intending on some day going back to them, no matter how bad, in hopes that technology or perhaps even a portion of the image is both interesting and salvageable.

This week it was the glacier lagoon’s turn. Using the latest version of Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop a few images, while far from perfect, have been coaxed to at least a viewing life. Now it’s taking much, much longer than usual in post-production but a before an after image shows you just what technology is capable of. I will be revisiting more of the images from that day while waiting for winter to pass.

Astounding.