Like a dog with someone's favorite slipper....I just can't let go of all the landscapes I shot last week. Here's another one...

Note to self: Next trip to Iceland, bring a car full of supermodels to act as close foreground subjects in my photographs. This would give my images a heightened sense of depth that I'm afraid they are missing at the moment. But I do like this craggy sunset shot. The very end of the day, after the crowds headed to their buses.

Some one asked a serious question on the blog a few days ago and that was whether it's worth it to bring a large format camera on their expedition to Iceland. I can only answer for myself but my advice would be absolutely not.

Now, I am presuming they are referring to a large format, view camera. Something with a bellows and front and rear standards. Something that requires a dark cloth or a hood under which to focus. Something that takes 4x5 or 8x10 inch sheet film.

The simple reason I would advise this way is the prevalence and unpredictability of the wind in most places; especially near the sea shores. I think most bellows cameras are in their happiest zone with no wind and get progressively more anxious as the winds pick up. Somewhere around 15-20 mph the bellows+wind would make stability impossible and higher gusts than that would eventually cause the bellows to lose its structural integrity and its ability to be light tight.

Bring a camera you are ready to carry all day, deploy quickly and use mostly handheld.

One of the major appealing features for me of mirrorless cameras is the ability to set a 1:1 aspect ratio and see it, without clutter, in the evf.

Many of us spent years operating square aspect ratio, medium format cameras. It's always a delight for me to find that feature in a new camera; the ability to see and take photographs in the square. It's one of the things I didn't like about recent generations of Sony A7 series cameras; the technology was there but the Sony engineers didn't seem to understand that adding the 1:1 aspect ratio was important to many photographers.

How many photographers? Hmmmm. I'm not sure Tony Northrup has done an authoritative study on that parameter yet but I can guarantee that the group who feels very positively about square crops has at least one avid member....

The 26 megapixels of the Fuji sensor adds a bit more information to the square frame. The shot above is from a Panasonic G9. It's a good time to be a square shooter. Or a shooter of squares.

As to the image: Diagonals, depth, color contrast and nice sky; who could ask for more?

(well, it would have been even better with a beautiful model in the closer foreground. Next time).