Adobe Iceland Adventure: Practical Non-Lesson #2

Reykjavik, Iceland: Everyone has safely flown in from all around the globe and the adventure has officially started! Earlier this evening, before the opening presentation by the Icelandic photographer, Sigurgeir Sigurjónsson, and before our elaborate Icelandic dinner hosted by ExpoImaging, I had the honor or welcoming the group and this is what I said:

I've been dreaming of this moment for several months now...wait a minute, I've been dreaming of this moment for several years. What a treat! Here we are in Iceland one of the most beautiful places on earth, together, on an adventure doing what we love most, making and talking photography. It doesn't get any better.

Anyway, most of you know me. Many of you have contributed images and experiences to my various digital photography books over the years. I think Maggie Hallahan goes back the longest; she helped when I wrote my first digital photography book in 1991. Bill Atkinson contributed to Photoshop for the Web in 1998. Michael Reichmann not only contributed to my book Shooting Digital but wrote the foreword to my latest book on RAW. One of John Isaac's photos graces the cover of Shooting Digital. Richard Morgenstein is featured in my last two books. Martin Sundberg and John McDermott and Peter Krogh have also been a great help to me. Derrick Story, along with Steve Weiss, Betsy Waliszewski, Sara Winge, Mark Brokering, Colleen Wheeler and others at O'Reilly media have been instrumental in making this project happen.

So in a way, this is a big thank you to you all. I just hope Michael Reichmann has used up all the glitches and it's smooth sailing from now on! (Michael was diverted from Toronto to Iceland via London and had quite the adventure getting here.)

Speaking of Michael Reichmann, accompanying him on his round-about trip to Iceland was Chris Sanderson, videographer, whose job it will be to stick his video camera into our faces for the whole week. If you have a problem with that, well...just tell him nicely. Chris is a reasonable guy and I think he has had enough excitement for the week!

This project wouldn't have been possible without the support of Adobe. And for that I want to thank Jennifer Stern who wasn't able to make the trip. It's her budget that's paying for most of us so thank you Jennifer. George Jardin and Addy Roff were critical in making this happen. Thank you! Thanks also to the other Adobe people who made the trip: Russell Brown, Melissa Gaul, and Angela Drury. I don't know you three as well, but by the end of the week I hope that changes.

This brings me to one of most exciting parts of the evening, and for me one the most exciting part of the whole adventure: Introducing our guest speaker, Sigurgeir Sigurjonsson. I first saw Sigurgeir's work in a book last year titled Lost in Iceland and I fell in love with his work. In fact, I've carried that book around to so many meetings to show it off my copy is dog-eared. Sigurgeir was born in 1948 and studied photography in Sweden and California. His background is photojournalism and portraiture and for a long time he shied away from shooting landscapes. That's not true anymore. I think he has produced some of the finest landscapes I've ever seen. In fact, talking to him last night at dinner, it occurred to me that his landscapes are really portraits. They have a personality and they speak, sometimes very loudly, always very wisely. A good portrait often says as much about the photographer as it does about the subject. In this case, I think Sigurgeir must be a very wise person indeed.

Anyway, I let him speak from here on. Thank you for coming! Enjoy the rest of the adventure!