Miko Russell Photography

Oh. My. God. These. Ponies. Were. FABULOUS.

Look at them just being awesome out in the field together.

That hair!!

We had heard about the wonderful Icelandic ponies but didn’t really think we’d see any on our trip because… where the hell would we see them? Luckily while driving between Thingvellir National Park and the Geysir we saw a bunch of farmland and OMG so many ponies at this one farm that we had to pull over (if you’re driving on Route 37 it was somewhere around Laugarvatn).

What made this even better was that, being February in Iceland, the sunlight level was set at “Golden Hour” for about half the day. Really helped out the photography effort haha.

The Blue Lagoon is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Iceland but good god DAMN it was worth it. This was one of the first things we did once we got here: landed from our red-eye flight at 6:00am, ate a massive hotel breakfast (the second-best European hotel breakfast buffet that I’ve ever eaten, in fact), then headed straight to the spa. We probably stayed longer than most people would but it was just lovely floating around in the warm pools and drinking and relaxing.

The Blue Lagoon (Bláa Lónið) is a man-made spa created from wastewater from a nearby geothermal plant. That sounds kinda gross to bathe in wastewater but that’s not the case, people started claiming it had healing abilities and so a spa was created.

We stayed long enough that the sun started going down a bit towards the end of our stay (in that last picture). I think afterwards we all went back to the hotel and napped. A great day haha.

I want to say that when my crew and I went to Iceland it was “before it was cool” but Iceland has been, well, hella cold forever so that phrase didn’t really work. This trip is what happens when a few friends discover a crazy good travel deal and purchase it on their phones while at a bar after drinking for several hours.

These set of photos is from the Thingvellir National Park (Þingvellir), which was about an hour or so outside of Reykjavik. According to my extensive research on Wikipedia it is where the Icelanding Parliament was founded in AD930. It’s also the site of the continental rift between the North American and Eurasian plates, which you can see in a bunch of the pictures as big canyons and cracks. The More You Know. The park is extremely beautiful and my pictures didn’t really do it justice, which I could definitely say for the entirety of Iceland.

You could easily spend a day here hiking or taking a boat out if it’s warm (there’s a big lake not pictured here) but it was February when we went and therefore a weeeeee bit cold. It’s a popular spot too to view the Northern Lights when they decide to show up.

Golden hour off the side of I-90 near Thorp, Washington. I’m not sure how my cousin and I made it to this spot but we were in the right place at the right time.

Some recent photos from a morning drive with my cousin, also a photographer. Stopped by a little spot on the Yakima River, near Ellensburg, Washington for some exploring. I know these pictures don’t actually show the river, but I found the plants along the bank a bit more interesting this time. Next time, river, next time.