Iceland Photo Guide

My name is Christopher Lund and I was born 1973 in Reykjavík, Iceland. My father took me on countless trips around Iceland when I was a kid. We travelled to every little town and village in Iceland. We even flew over most of them in his small Cessna to photograph from the air. I usually sat in the back, loading fresh rolls of Kodak VHC in the Pentax 6×7 bodies as fast as I could. Ever since I can

remember, I have loved to travel and discover new places. Our country is so diverse and never fails to amaze me. Short or long trips, every time I see something new to photograph. I studied photography mainly through working with my dad. He is in fact Norwegian, immigrated to Iceland in 1963 with my mother who is Icelandic. As a young man, he was obsessed with Iceland and hung out with Icelandic students at the University of Oslo, where he eventually met my mother. I consider my father to be an Icelander, not many Icelanders know the country as well as he does. He is also quite well known around Iceland, since almost everyone has had a visit from him, selling one of his aerial obliques! In 1993, I graduated from college (majoring in Natural Sciences) and moved to Trondheim, Norway, where I worked as a photographer and a lab technician at the company Melhuus A/S (now Fame photographers). Between 1994 and 1998, I continued to work and study photography with my father in Iceland and was in charge of both analog and digital processing in his company. Between 1998 and 1999, I moved to Viborg in Denmark to study photography at Medieskolerne. While there, I also worked for Grundfos a/s as a photographer, as well as managing my own prepress company, which I named Pixel Production (I thought it was quite smart). I moved back to Iceland just before Christmas 1999. Throughout 2000-2001 I was the manager of The Icelandic Image Library. A small division with a big name, in a doomed Internet bubble company that didn’t even survive a year. In 2001, I founded a company called Dikta (professional digital photo lab) which I ran for a couple of years, until I got totally fed up with the lab business and went 100% freelance as a photographer. At that time, I felt that it was time to become independent so I could spend more time doing my own photography projects. I have never looked back and couldn’t be happier. Since then I have done all sorts of photography; weddings, portraits, architecture, product and industrial photography to name a few. In a small market like Iceland one really needs to be multi-skilled. I also do Fine Art printing for artists and galleries with large format Epson and prepress work for publishing companies. I have gradually shifted my focus more and more into traveling and nature photography – since this is where my passion lies. In 2009 I decided to become a certified guide and entered the Certified Guide Course in the Continuing Education department of the University of Iceland. And now I enjoy doing what I love most – photography and traveling.