……this one’s just a composite of 4 images manually blended for focus and exposure.

This image represents the fulfillment of a long time photographic goal of mine to photograph the aurora borealis through an ice cave. There’s a crazy story behind this image. I was so tired of only doing ‘easy’ shots with my big 12-client photo groups that I was determined to get this unique shot no matter what.

I was trying for weeks to get to this ice cave on a night with strong auroras. One week in December was terrible weather and strong winds and we had to shelter in place in Hof for a few days. Then finally the weather cleared and auroras were forecasted and as I started up my vehicle in the Jokulsarlon parking lot to drive to the ice cave via 4×4 road, my clutch went on the car, and I had to get it towed to Hofn, were it sat for a couple weeks while I was leading other photo tours in Iceland. I then had a 2 day window between two tours I was leading, from 23-25 December over Christmas. I took an 8 hour bus out to Hofn arriving at night, but I had prearranged for keys to be left in my unlocked car.

Unfortunately, a few weeks before this, I had my car repainted, and in the process they took off the doors and then re-attached a side door light doing me a favour, but since the strong Icelandic winds blow open my car doors and bend the hinges, the door doesn’t close easily and the mechanic left the light on in the car and drained the battery dead. After going around town and having locals call up the mechanic at home, he came out and gave me a jumpstart. I drove out to Vestrahorn and slept in my car that night, planning on going to the ice cave the next day on 24 December. But in the morning when I awoke my battery was again dead, so I spent the whole morning walking to a nearby farm and bothering him on this this very family-oriented holiday in Iceland. $40 for a jumpstart was the going price, ouch!

I was finally on my way to the ice cave. But this week was much snowier than normal, and the 4×4 track to the glacier was covered in pretty deep snow with rutted tracks from the other superjeeps with monster tires that go the cave daily (except over Christmas of course). So, I put my faith in my beloved “Big Bad Brown Betty” vehicle, with it’s normal sized 4wd tires, and hoped I wouldn’t get stuck. I was bouncing all over the place, bottoming out in the deep ruts, and after a couple kilometers, grounded to a halt, completely stuck. The crusty snow was stranding my car in the center without weight on the wheels. I took out my ice axe (I had no shovel), and spent about 3 hours trying to chop out the snow from under the car, but I was really stuck. So, with night falling, I abandoned my car and hiked for 2 more hours to the ice cave, figuring I’d worry about my car on Christmas day. I carried my sleeping bag and camera gear.

When I got the cave, no auroras were out yet, so I went exploring to the back recesses of the cave where no one else had been before. In the dark in the ice cave, I couldn’t see so well, and was crawling across some sheets of ice, when the ice started breaking up around me. Then I started quickly sinking into extremely soft glacial silt mud, just like quicksand, nearly up to my waist in a matter of seconds. It was very scary, just as if you had fallen through thin ice on a lake. Trying to walk out of it wasn’t an option as I kept sinking. When I tried to grab and push myself up onto the ice sheets around me, they all broke up and crumbled around me. I was really scared, and had the terrible feeling of what it would be like to die by suffocation in quick-silt. So I thought quickly about what to do if you fall through lake ice, and tried the same technique of rolling onto my side, and rolling up onto the thin ice covering the glacial silt quicksand, to distribute my weight. This thankfully worked, and I slid and crawled back to stable snow, but in the process I was covered head to toe in cold wet mud. So I had to take off my outer layers and my down coat, and just then the auroras started showing very strongly through the ice cave roof skylight. So for the next 3 hours I was using two cameras to photograph the auroras through the ice cave roof. One camera for a time-lapse sequence, one camera exposure and focus bracketed for panoramas to obtain wider field of view than even my 14mm lens gave me. Shivering cold, probably mildly hypothermic, I kept on photographing. When my batteries died, I crawled into my sleeping bag in the open air under the ice cave, but there was a cold wind blowing through the cave all night so I never really warmed up.

Next morning I was very cold still but the thing you have to do is just start moving, so I left my sleeping bag and tripod behind in the cave (my ice cave guide friends could pick it up for me the next day I figured, since I didn’t want to carry it 2 hours back to the car), and started hiking back to the car. I was pretty thirsty, and found some running water under the snow in one place. After a couple more hours trying to futilely dig my car out, on Christmas day afternoon a big group of people I know from Hali guesthouse came by in a truck, and they pushed me out. I drove back on Christmas to Reykjavik, and met my tour group the next morning at 6am at the airport. End of story! Photograph by JohnathanEsper JohnathanEsper. NOTE FROM THIS WEBSITE: This photograph is from 500PX unless otherwise stated. The photograph/image is transmitted via IFTT and all mandatory fields have been completed and inserted, on best effort basis, including username and description of the photograph/image as per the information supplied when the photograph/image was downloaded through 500PX and as required by IFTT. This photograph/picture is used here for non-commercial purposes only. We respect the work of photographers and we are glad to promote their work on this site absolutely free. If you are a photographer or an artist or a writer, and if you like us to help you promote your work, please write to us at nordaminv@gmail.com and write “Photography/Art” in the subject line. We are happy to discuss how we can help you through our social media channels and marketing experience to get more exposure for your work. We reserve the right to reject any photographs or artwork which we feel it is inappropriate.