My Regent Moment: top ten photos of Iceland, by Sam Curry

After spending a few days exploring Iceland with Regent Holidays, Sam Curry shares ten of his top photos and memories of his trip. 

Route to Glymur

This was the first picture I took on our trip, taken on route 47 headed away from Reykjavik and towards Hotel Glymur. I feel it sums up an Icelandic road trip in one picture; you have the snow-covered mountains, the fjords, a waterfall and a very fine dusting of snow, which for an Englishman may as well be 6 inches!

Glymur lights

One of the main reasons we wanted to go to Iceland was to see the Aurora Borealis, though you frequently hear horror stories where people pay a small fortune to go on northern lights-hunting tours and never see a thing.

We were exceptionally lucky to catch this on our first night; we were on the brink of turning in after a long day's travel but we had left something in the car, I went to get it and found this outside the door.

Grotta

We went into Reykjavik on our second day for a look around and on the outskirts we found a black beach and Grotta lighthouse. It’s a gorgeous spot on a cold and windy day just to walk and look out into the Atlantic.

Godafoss

On day 3 of our fly-drive we decided it was a good idea to drive to Godafoss as we were moving hotel anyway. We looked it up and saw it was about 8 hours (it turned out that it was 12 hours and a full 535-mile round trip!) but it was worth it and definitely one of the best waterfalls in Iceland. It’s a truly beautiful place and it was near deserted when we visited.

Snaefellsnes Peninsula

After a long day driving to Godafoss, the next day we wanted to have a chilled one so took the scenic route around Snaefellsnes Peninsula, this is where we found out quite how powerful the weather can be in Iceland. This picture was taken about three minutes before a complete whiteout took hold of the road and forced us to stop, amazing if not slightly terrifying!

Kirkjufell Farm

An hour after the whiteout experience on the same road we came across this – in the background is the famous Kirkjufell ‘Sorting Hat’ Mountain from the side that you don’t normally see, in the foreground a small farm with horses next to the frozen ocean.

Geysir

A slightly unusual way to photograph Geysir, I love the floating water droplets though as this icon of Icelandic geology prepares to blow once more. The colours in this region of Iceland are fantastic, the sulphur in the earth brings it to life with greens and yellows, and it’s one of the only places we found trees!

Seljalandsfoss

This place is awesome, it's home to several waterfalls and you can even walk around the back of this one. If you go when it’s cold you get spears of ice hanging down from the falls which you can make out in this picture.

Road to Skogafoss

This wonderful piece of tarmac is part of Route One near Skogafoss. In the background is Eyjafjallajokull; here you can see the vast difference between the South of Iceland in comparison to the previous more snowy ones in the North, it feels much more barren here even though it is less snowy.

Blue Lagoon

We finished our holiday with the obligatory visit to Blue Lagoon. In a word - amazing! Credit goes to my wife Laura for this picture, it’s the only one in 10 days I didn’t take!

Behind the lens: Sam

Sam is 29 and lives in Suffolk with his wife and 3 dogs. During the week, Sam operates oil tankers for a living and travels with his wife, Laura, whenever he can, heading wherever they can with whatever they've managed to save up since the last one, whether that be a weekend in Austria or a 10-night Scandinavian break. Sam shoots with a Nikon D3300 DSLR.

You can see more of Sam's photos on instagram @samcurry89

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