Thingvellir National Park in Iceland is where the Althing general assembly – the oldest parliament in the world – convened for almost 900 years. It is also where people go to get married, either in the old church which seats less than 60 people, or in one of the beautiful outdoor locations around the park. I attended one such wedding in 2008, when our friends Dagbjört and Anders got married. Their first-born, Pétur, was only a few months old at the time.
Fast-forward to this summer. Dagbjört and Anders now also have a little girl, Freyja. The family lives in Denmark, but as luck would have it, they were in Iceland at about the same time as we were. Dagbjört got in touch with me, and asked if I would be available for a family photo session. I certainly was, and up until the last minute were planning on doing the shoot at Öskjuhlíð, a miniature forest (B.C. dwellers would call it shrubbery) in the middle of Reykjavík.
At the last minute they thought of an even better idea: go to Thingvellir, and do the shoot in the same crevice as where they got married. They would all be dressed in traditional Icelandic clothing, so the rock formations of Thingvellir would be more fitting – more “Icelandic” if you will – than the gangly trees of Öskjuhlíð.
The weather was great, and when we got there we quickly found out that the the very large, local population of gnats agreed. In the crevice, there was no wind. It was as still as in your everyday living room. If we weren’t moving around, waving our arms, and simply trying to fend the flies of by all means possible, it felt as if one’s head was crawling with them. And of course they seemed oddly attracted to eyes, nostrils, ears and mouth. Rich in protein? Perhaps, but I prefer not to have my food walking around my mouth.
My son was with me, and he was able to use a big, round reflector to ward the gnats off, at least temporarily. It didn’t take long, though, for us to give up and move out of the crevice. We went a little higher, and high enough to feel the slightest of breezes, enough to get rid of about half the gnats. The other half was as annoying as they could, but we managed and ended up with a number of really nice shots.
And before you ask, a lot of time went into cloning out flies. Some photos, which otherwise would have been great, could not be salvaged – the ones where pesky gnats were actually crawling on the lens.
