There’s a moment — and you can’t predict when it will come — where the sky begins to move. Not the clouds. The light itself. A pale green shimmer appears on the northern horizon, so faint you think your eyes are playing tricks. Then it intensifies. Tendrils of emerald light begin to dance, curl, and pulse across the entire sky, and you realize that no photograph, no time-lapse, no 4K video will ever capture what you’re seeing. You try anyway. Every photographer does.

I spent twelve days in Iceland during February, chasing the aurora borealis across a landscape that looked like it belonged to another planet. The experience changed how I think about photography, patience, and the relationship between a camera and the natural world.

Preparing for the Dark

Winter in Iceland is not for casual tourists. The sun rises around 10:30 AM and sets by 4 PM, giving you barely six hours of daylight. Temperatures hover between -5°C and -15°C, with wind chill pushing the effective temperature far lower. The wind itself is the real adversary — relentless, biting, and capable of knocking a tripod flat if you haven’t anchored it properly.

My gear list was extensive but deliberately minimal. Two camera bodies (one as backup, because cold kills batteries), three lenses (14mm f/2.8 for auroras, 24-70mm for landscapes, 70-200mm for details), a carbon fiber tripod heavy enough to resist the wind, and more hand warmers than I could count. The key lesson I learned on night one: touchscreen gloves don’t work when it’s -12°C. You need proper mittens with removable finger tips, and even then you’ll have about thirty seconds of bare-finger operation before the cold starts to bite.

Battery management becomes an obsession. Cold drains lithium-ion batteries at an alarming rate — a battery that lasts four hours in summer might give you ninety minutes in Icelandic winter. I kept four spares inside my jacket at all times, rotating them in and out of the camera to keep them warm. Some photographers use chemical hand warmers taped to their battery grips. I tried this and can confirm it works, but it also looks ridiculous.

The Chase Begins

Aurora hunting is equal parts science and luck. The Icelandic Meteorological Office provides a forecast rated 0-9 (the KP index), but the number only tells part of the story. You also need clear skies, minimal light pollution, and the willingness to drive three hours at midnight because a gap in the clouds appeared over some fjord you’ve never heard of.

My guide, Þórir (good luck pronouncing that — I gave up on day two and he graciously responded to “Thor”), had been chasing auroras for fifteen years. He could read the sky like a book, sensing changes in cloud cover and atmospheric conditions that the forecast models missed. “The apps tell you probability,” he said during one of our long drives. “But the aurora doesn’t follow rules. You have to feel it.”

On the first three nights, we saw nothing. Overcast skies, snow, more overcast skies. The disappointment was crushing, but Þórir was unfazed. “Iceland teaches patience,” he told me, sipping coffee from a thermos that seemed bottomless. “Every photographer who comes here learns the same lesson: you don’t control the show. You just show up and hope.”

The aurora isn’t something you photograph. It’s something that happens to you. The camera is just your way of proving to yourself it was real. – Sofia Martins

Night four changed everything.

The Night the Sky Exploded

We’d driven to Stokksnes, a black sand beach on the southeast coast with the dramatic Vestrahorn mountain as a backdrop. The forecast showed KP 5 — moderate activity — but clear skies, which mattered more. At 10:47 PM (I checked; some moments deserve exact timestamps), the first green arc appeared low on the horizon.

Within twenty minutes, the entire sky was alive. Not just green — purple, pink, white, and a blue-green I’ve never seen in any other context. The aurora moved like a living thing, pulsing and rippling in curtains that stretched from horizon to horizon. The reflection in the wet black sand created a mirror effect that made it feel like we were standing inside the light itself.

I shot 847 photographs that night. My best settings: ISO 1600-3200, f/2.8, 6-15 second exposures depending on the speed of the aurora movement. When the aurora moves quickly, you need shorter exposures to capture the structure rather than a green blur. When it’s a slow, steady arc, longer exposures produce smoother, more ethereal results.

• Composition matters more than settings — include foreground elements like mountains, water, or structures to give scale and context to the aurora. A sky full of green light is beautiful but lacks the emotional impact of aurora over a lonely church or reflected in a glacier lagoon.
• Manual focus is essential — autofocus fails in the dark. Set your lens to manual, focus on a distant light or star using live view magnification, and tape the focus ring in place so it doesn’t shift when you touch the camera.
• Shoot RAW, always — the color information in aurora photographs is extraordinary, and RAW files give you the latitude to bring out subtle purples and pinks that JPEG compression destroys.
• White balance: set to around 3500-4000K. Auto white balance tends to overcompensate and kill the natural green tones. You can adjust in post, but getting it close in-camera helps with chimping on location.
• Bring a headlamp with a red light mode — white light destroys your night vision and annoys every other photographer within 500 meters. Red light preserves your adaptation to the dark and lets you operate your camera without fumbling.

Ice Caves and Frozen Waterfalls

The aurora is Iceland’s headline act, but the daytime landscapes rival anything the night sky offers. Vatnajökull, Europe’s largest glacier, contains ice caves that form and reform each winter — no two seasons produce the same caves. Entering one is like stepping inside a sapphire. The ice above you is compressed so densely that it absorbs every color of light except blue, creating an otherworldly glow that shifts from turquoise to deep cobalt depending on the thickness.

Photographing ice caves requires patience and the right light conditions. Overcast days are actually ideal — direct sunlight creates harsh contrasts and hot spots on the ice, while diffused light fills the cave evenly and brings out the blue tones. Wide-angle lenses are essential for capturing the scale, but don’t forget to shoot details: the air bubbles trapped in the ice, the black volcanic ash striations, the way light refracts through crystal-clear formations.

Seljalandsfoss and Skógafoss, two of Iceland’s most famous waterfalls, become entirely different subjects in winter. Seljalandsfoss freezes partially, creating ice curtains that you can walk behind (carefully — the path is treacherous). Skógafoss generates so much mist that the surrounding rocks become encased in ice sculptures that change shape daily. I spent an entire afternoon shooting Skógafoss from different angles as the low winter sun painted the ice formations in shades of gold and amber.

The Silence Between Storms

What surprised me most about Iceland wasn’t the auroras or the ice caves or the volcanic landscapes. It was the silence. Between storms, in the moments when the wind drops and the snow stops falling, Iceland becomes the quietest place I’ve ever stood. No birds, no traffic, no hum of civilization. Just the creak of ice, the distant rumble of a wave, and your own breathing.

That silence changed my photography. I stopped shooting frantically and started waiting — for the right light, the right cloud formation, the right feeling. Some of my best images from the trip were taken in moments of stillness, when the landscape seemed to hold its breath. A single shaft of light breaking through clouds onto a snow-covered mountain. The last pink glow of sunset reflected in the perfectly still water of Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon. A lone Icelandic horse standing in a field of white, steam rising from its nostrils.

Iceland taught me that the best photographs aren’t taken. They’re received. You put yourself in the right place, at the right time, with the right mindset, and the image comes to you. The aurora is the ultimate expression of this truth — you cannot control it, direct it, or ask it to pose. You can only stand in the cold, with numb fingers and a full heart, and press the shutter when the sky decides to dance.