Large Scale Central

Photographs of basalt in Iceland

Besides trains, my other main hobby is landscape photography. Devon Sinsly posted (in his 2018 Mik build - link) some work he had done on modeling basalt. I am somewhat obsessed with basalt after taking a photo workshop/tour in Iceland with some pro photographers, so I thought I’d post some of my pictures hear, rather than hijacking Devon’s excellent build log.

Here’s me sitting on some basalt at the shore to give you some idea of the scale of the distinct hexagon shapes they form in:

And here are a couple of b/w shots of one of my favorite little out of the way spots in Iceland: a basalt field with a small rapids running through it:

(There’s a lot more but I don’t want to bore you!)

There’s a lot of basalt in Iceland:

Sometimes it is weathered and colored in interesting ways by the ocean:

It is so prevalent in Iceland that the main famous church in Reykjavik has hexagonal columns inspired by the basalt that’s everywhere:

So, as a distraction, those are some of my basalt pics from a truly epic Iceland trip.

Cheers!

It certainly wasn’t boring. Don’t see that is this here neck of the woods.

On my way to Antarctica, we flew to New Zealand and had a day before boarding our ship. Part of the South Island tour included the Basalt by the Sea formation. I saved my film … Google sez at least this pic is NZ;

Way cool!!

I love all kinds of natural rock formations, and basalt certainly ranks up there as one of the most interesting types.

Wonderful images, Gentlemen. (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-laughing.gif)(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-laughing.gif)(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-laughing.gif)(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-laughing.gif)(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-laughing.gif)Wonderful images…

Cool photos Jim, We have many examples of those basaltic formations here in California. The most notable is the Devil’s Post Pile near Mammoth Mountain in the Eastern Sierra.

Central and South central Washington is loaded with them. They call it the “Scablands”. They were exposed when Lake Missoula let go after the last Ice Age and flooded the entire area.

I always enjoy seeing them. On some property that we once owned in the scablands. there was some curved ones. Looked like a sculpture.

Thanks, folks, for those other shots and info about basalt! Fun stuff. Speaking of fun, I went a little crazy with one of my basalt shots and turned it into a lion:

And just to be complete, here’s a smattering of other Iceland photos, starting with just how amazingly gorgeous it is in general:

Moving on to the amazing waterfalls that are all over the place:

And the amazing glacier ice on a black sand beach:

If you ever get a chance to go to Iceland, I highly recommend it.

Cheers!

Most of my ballast is crushed basalt.

The Great Northern, Northern Pacific, Spokane, Portland and Seattle, and Uncle Pete used crushed ballast exclusively in this neighborhood, there is so much of it.

Did you see any volcanoes in Iceland?

Viking ruins?

I visited Iceland in 2001, I climbed the tracks to the Arctic Circle, I saw these gigantic waterfalls that invite you to plunge into the void, these huge glaciers, but I remember especially this bath hot water at the Blue Lagoon. It is a country that brings you back to the creation of the land where you feel very small. A site to see absolutely once in his life

The trip I took to Iceland was a photo workshop/tour, so we were pretty much moving from site to site that were totally photogenic: lots of waterfalls, a couple of glaciers, a geyser, and the black sand beach and other things like that. We didn’t see any active volcanos but I’m pretty sure that all the mountains we saw were inactive volcanos. We certainly saw some spots where previous eruptions had, for example, melted part of a glacier and cause a massive flood that eroded a path through part of Iceland to the sea.

No Viking ruins.

We were also not able to see any of the unique wildlife there, like Puffins.

This was a 9 day photo workshop: 2 pro photographers with 7 students. It was the most exhausting vacation I ever took. We were up until midnight or 1am every night (this was around the end of June, early July so the sun was only down for about 1.5 hours every night), but had to get up at a normal hour every morning to check out of our hotel. No sleep, but lots of travel and hiking and photography stops. Lots of fun.

As I understand you, I myself was surprised by this night so short

Great pics Jim!!

oops double post??

Darn Rooster, and I thought maybe you just really liked the pics :slight_smile:

Awesome pics! The “lion” is very clever and well done. Iceland looks like a photog’s dream – I would love to fly my drone there.

Thanks all!