Nature as Painter – Landmannalaugar’s colorful Mountains

Iceland’s southern highlands preserve a gem: the area around Landmannalaugar, the largest rhyolite area in Iceland. Surreal, unique and incredibly beautiful.

Landmannalaugar is located in the huge caldera of the Torfajökull volcano. The special feature of this volcano is that it discharged rhyolitic lava. Rhyolite is a silica rich volcanic rock which comes in red, yellow-braun as well as green-blue-grey colors. And so you find various mountains in various colors next to each other – pretty unique! Between the mountains there is also a huge dark black obsidian lava field called Laugahraun creating a strong contrast to the colorful mountains.

For the above shot I chose a 14 mm lens on full format. The idea was that the characteristic distortion of this lens should drag the observer right into the picture via the Laugahraun lava field and through some geothermal vent to the triangle like green-blue-grey Bláhnjúkur volcano.

The shot below nicely shows the obsidian rock, like dark glas. The red mountain in the back is the Brennisteinsalda volcano.