I've spent this past week in Iceland and I'm just gonna say it, this is the best place on
planet earth to shoot 360 or photography of any
kind for that matter. This place is stunning
with non-stop landscapes and sunsets that lasts for four hours. When you go into the heart of the country you think you're dreaming
or on another planet, it's just so different to what
we're used to in big cities. I shot some of my best
360 content ever here and I thought it'd be fun
to go behind the scenes and take a look at how I got
each shot along my journey. Because finding an amazing
place to shoot is one thing, but knowing how to shoot
it is just as important if not more so. So in this video I'm
going to walk you through all the best shots I
got and how I got them. On day one I got in pretty late, so by the time I got to the
hotel it was about 10 o'clock, so I shot the previous video on my channel "why I don't post 360
videos" and went to bed. So day two was when the
epic 360 adventure began. So I'm very fortunate to
have an Icelandic friend, he's a local, and he happens to be the number one 360 photographer in the world. Well, I don't know if
there's official rankings, but let me just put it this way. Whenever there's a 360 photo competition, his photos normally come in
first, second and/or third. And when you live in a place like Iceland, yeah, you can see why. So he picked me up, there we are in the car
and the adventure began. The aim was to go where
the tourists don't go, and fortunately for me, he knew Iceland like the back of his hand. After an hour or so of driving I was already setting
up for my first shot, we didn't even need to stop. I put my Insta360 EVO on a selfie stick, put it out the sunroof and
recorded five minutes of video. I then reframed it in the
app in about two minutes into this hyperlapse here. However, now is when the
not so fun bit happened. It started raining and
raining and raining some more. So after another hour or two of driving we stopped at our first location and finally the rain had stopped enough for us to get out of the
car and start shooting. We were near the edge of a
cliff, overlooking a river, at the end of which was this
amazing gushing waterfall. And not just one, but there were hundreds of
smaller waterfalls all around. So I did the obvious,
I got my Theta Z1 out and took my very first
360 photo of the day. It did take a few attempts because I kept getting
water droplets on the lens, but I actually ended up
with an okay tiny planet. And then I heard a buzzing. I turned around and there
was my friend Olafur flying his Mavic Pro 2 who had already taken at least three amazing panorama photos. For those who don't know, you can shoot 360 photos
directly from DJI drones, there's a mode called sphere
mode in the panorama settings that essentially takes 21 or so photos. Where the camera goes like this, then it turns, goes like this and it takes really high-resolution photos all the way around and
stitches them together. So he showed me what
he'd done and I was like. Here's why. Just when I was feeling good about taking up pretty good 360 photo, he had to steal my thunder and take this amazing
360 photo from the sky. At this point I realized I
really am an amateur at 360. I mean yeah, I've got lots of experience, but my photos aren't on that level. How was I to compete with this? I guess I'll just figure it out later. An hour later, our next stop was at one of the most
beautiful sites I'd ever seen. Hours from the closest town
at the top of the mountain we came across a massive blue lake with potentially the
bluest water I'd ever seen. You wouldn't have seen this thing unless you made it to the top, but when we did, oh my god, this was really something
out of a postcard. The rain was still lightly
drizzling but I didn't care, I had to get a shot at this location. So I set up my monopod and got a few 360s from the edge of the crater. They turned out pretty good but I feel like the water was still a little bit too far away. Without hesitation,
Olafur got out his drone, and was already hundreds
of meters in the air by the time I got back just minutes later. It was raining, I thought,
you can't fly in the rain. Well yeah, apparently you can. Looking at his screen I was like, okay, it's time to get my drone out. Even though I hadn't flown in like a year, this was too good of
an opportunity to miss. So I got out my Mavic Air, warmed it up, and sent it into the sky. I pretty much remembered how to fly it. And how do I rate my drone skills? Yeah, not great, but it
was good practice, right? It was windy, it was rainy, they could have turned out better, but I actually rate these
shots pretty decently. So there was Mr. Ben after
not flying for a year, producing this amazing aerial masterpiece. And then it happened again. I looked at his screen. (melodious instrumental music) How? Why doesn't mine look like that? Then it rained some more and
we shot some more naturally and slowly I got used to
shooting with drones in 360 mode. It's really not that hard. All you got to do is get it up there, try and find the middle of your landscape. The drone always looks further
away than it really is, so it does take a while
to get used to that. But once you do, all you need to do is
put it into panorama mode then sphere mode and press the button, then the drone does everything for you. (melodious instrumental music) These images were shot in
RAW and stitched in PTGui then color corrected in Photoshop. Olafur has a way more advanced workflow, where he shoots in bracketing,
he patches in the sky, he pays so much attention to every detail. But I'm all about a shorter
post-production workflow, so I only did the bare minimum. I just shoot so much content. I don't have time unfortunately
to work for so long on one individual photo. but from this location, yeah, I'm happy. At that point I accepted
that my drone shots would never be as good as Olafur's, because he does this all the time, he's taken so many 360
panoramas from his drone. And it's so funny when
you watch him doing it, he's like a little kid playing a game. He can talk to you, look away, and his thumbs just move automatically, and you see what he's doing
and it's like a masterpiece, like how did you do that? Like you didn't even look at the screen. And look, that's how
I am with 360 cameras, eventually it just comes naturally. So yeah, it was kind of cool
to see this guy at work. I'd seen his 360s on
Facebook many times before and was blown away. He has a reputation as one
of the top guys out there and then and there I saw why. Just after midnight the sun began to set, and before we started our two-hour journey back to Reykjavik, as the tourist, yeah, I had to capture
the midnight sunset. So I got up my Z1, put it on
my monopod and shot two photos. One in HDR rendering and one in RAW. And this was at a very average location for Iceland standards, but the final result
is actually incredible. The car looks so dramatic,
the billboards look epic, and the sunset, well
that needs no explaining, that looks incredible. Look at those colors on the skyline. This shot that I put
very little effort in to ended up being my best 360
camera shot of the day. I got one more quick shot on my Mavic Air, then we headed back to the city. (melodious instrumental music) On the third day I was pretty exhausted from the previous 14-hour day of shooting, so I gave myself permission
to just be a tourist and go out and do some shopping. I bought myself a cool new jacket, which was the price of a small car. But I knew I'd need it next time we went out
shooting in the highlands. That place got damn
cold at night, so yeah. Here it is. This jacket could withstand
basically any kind of weather. If a volcano erupted I'd be good, but also I'm not really
a fan of shopping all day or doing nothing and not being productive, so of course I had to do
some kind of shooting. So I paid a visit to
Iceland's iconic cathedral in the middle of the city. And this building is absolutely incredible both inside and out. I started with some shots of the exterior, and they ended up pretty good. I put my camera on the ground, and here I lay really close to the camera, that turned out pretty good. So where this location was
much better was on the inside, the architecture was truly incredible. There was just so much symmetry no matter where you took a photo, you would get an awesome shot. The issue though, there were lots of
people there in my shot. So after a few photobombers had passed, I put my camera on the ground and took this inverted planet. Next, I wanted to challenge myself to get a really good interior towards the back of the church. The windows here were really interesting because they were tall and skinny and they just added to that
minimalist look of this church. The sun was blazing in from one side and I knew in-built HDR
wouldn't do the job here. So I shot this shot in RAW mode and color corrected in Adobe Camera Raw. While I didn't recover
every last highlight, overall, I'm really happy with this. This interior looks great. It's always a fun challenge exposing the interior
of a church correctly because the windows are always so big and the light is so intense,
yet it's so beautiful inside. You'll never ever get it
right in the first attempt, so prepare for lots of trying and failing. I got the best result here by deliberately underexposing the scene and bringing up the shadows later because I knew I could recover them. But it's actually much
harder to recover highlights, so that was my strategy. If could have my time again, yeah, I would have tried to get it better, but unfortunately it's too late and yeah it was good enough
for a simple social media post. The next day I did the tourist thing. I took a bus trip around
the highlights of Iceland with like 60 other people. Our first stop was at this massive crater. I think it was called the Kerid Crater. And this thing was a
massive hole in the ground, a little pond at the bottom. It was quite a sight to behold. It was full of tourists. Yes, and I was one of them. But the unfortunate thing was, we didn't have much time here. So I snapped off a bunch
of HDR shots with my Z1 but I'm going to be honest, I'm not really happy with
them, so I haven't posted any. They just ended up too flat and I really struggled to capture
the vastness of this place in a 360 photo. I don't know, maybe I didn't
choose the right location or it was something else, but these photos were
nothing to write home about. You can't always take good ones. The vast majority of 360
photos I take are terrible. I can admit that. Next up was at this giant waterfall and it was extremely beautiful but extremely crowded with tourists. It wasn't just my bus, but I swear there was
like 20 tourist buses filled with 60 people each, all crowding around this
massive waterfall enclosure. Which meant, no matter where you went, you've got at least 20
people in your shot. But nevertheless, I carried
on, I got a bunch of photos. I took too many HDR shots,
that's another mistake I made. HDR is great in so many situations, but I definitely learned at this point that is not so great in pure sunlight. And luckily I realized
this while I was shooting and switch into RAW mode and
expose my shots manually. There was definitely at
least one keeper in there. And on my way back to the bus I chose to shoot this
hyperlapse up on my ONE X. (melodious instrumental music) The selfie stick was fully
extended above my head and I recorded 360 video at
5.7K for around five minutes. Reframed in the app and badabing badaboom, there you have it. Our next stop was at The
Great Geysir of Iceland. Yeah, you know, those
big water spout things that come from the ground. There was a whole bunch
of them around this area and the biggest one only
blew every nine minutes. I then spent the next
hour waiting patiently with my Theta Z1, and I had to make sure the
shutter speed was really fast, so I could capture that
movement of the water in midair. and I got it, and I got it again and again and again. Each time I changed something small, whether it was the exposure
or the composition, the lighting didn't always work. Capturing water against sky is actually a really tricky thing to do, because especially when it's cloudy the water blends into the clouds so it doesn't really
have the same epic effect that you might think. So while I did get a bunch of quite good 360s with the geysir, I just know it would have been
better with clear blue skies. It turns out you can't
control the weather. Just when you need it to be one way, it's like haha, I'm not gonna do that, I'm gonna do the opposite. Damn you, weather. Anyway, on the way back to the bus, I got this shot of me
stopping to smell the flowers, and then I got there 20 minutes late. Oops. I'd say my day on the tour bus was good, but there were just too many tourists, they were always in my shot somewhere. And when you come to a
place to shoot landscapes, you kind of don't want
people taking selfies in front of the landscapes. Even though I'm guilty as charged, I can admit it, I'm here to take selfies. But sometimes you just
want to go like this. It's actually quite funny
looking back at my photos and seeing the reactions
of some of the tourists to me shooting with a 360 camera. After the tour ended I've decided to come back to the church, you get one last shot. This time I put my camera
on a monopod at eye level and the aim was to capture more of the interesting brick patterns. Because even with this little
elevation as five feet, it's enough to reveal an
entirely new area of the same. I think that one probably ended up being my favorite exterior of this church. There was another landmark
within Reykjavik City called the Sun Voyager, and I knew there was some
kind of epic 360 shot waiting for me. And it's funny, because when I got there, I just intuitively knew what to do. I got my camera out, put it on
a small tripod on the ground, adjusted my aperture and shutter speed so the scene became really dark and created a deliberate
silhouette effect. Because remember the sun doesn't go down in Iceland at this time of year, so you have to fake nighttime. And I think I faked it pretty good. Here's the raw shot I
took, edited in Photoshop. (melodious instrumental music) The next day was quite possibly the most epic shoot day of my entire life. That's right, it was round two of our epic 360 shooting marathon. The previous time I went out shooting with my Icelandic friend, we shot for around 12 to 14 hours. And I knew going into this day that this one was gonna be even bigger. The first stop was at a
waterfall just outside of town, and I got a bunch of
shots here in HDR mode, they turned out pretty good. If I could go back I probably wouldn't have shot them in HDR, in fact I would barely
have used it all in Iceland because it's mostly exteriors, you just don't need it for that. This one was definitely a cool shot, however, it's nothing
compared to what's to come. We then stopped at an
even bigger waterfall and this thing was epic and overpowering. The sound was just so intense and amazing, it made you feel at one with nature, as corny as that sounds. So the challenge here was to get as close as
possible to the waterfall without drowning or getting too much water in my 360 cameras. The first thing I tried
was putting my monopod in the stream of water here. I knew because it was
weighted it wouldn't fall over and I just think this is a really cool way to cover your tracks and have something interesting
at the bottom of your 360. The shot turned out pretty good, but I felt like I could still get closer. And this was a tough one because
it goes against the advice from another video I made which is keep your camera
away from the water, yet my camera was getting covered in these little droplets
of water the closer I got. This waterfall was truly magical but there was also so much spray that it was absolutely drenching
everyone that came near it. So what I had to do was protect
my camera under my shirt then creep closer and wait
for the spray to settle down. I think it stopped for like
10 seconds every few minutes, so that was my chance to strike. And yeah, I got a lot of
shots with water on the lens but I also got one or two where it looks really good
and everything's clear. Unfortunately, no matter
where I position myself there was a tourist taking a selfie that inevitably ends up in my 360 shot. But hey, sometimes I was
in there, so suck it. I'm pretty happy with
the shots I got here. And shooting manually
with a fast shutter speed firstly help me capture the water better, but also the birds flying above I was able to capture them in midair. And there were heaps of birds, I didn't even really realize until later how many birds they were. And to me that makes the
360 more interesting. You want as much interesting
detail as possible in your 360 shots, and that includes left, right, forwards, backwards, down and up. Our next stop was at the top of the cliffs overlooking Iceland's famous black beach. Here I tried a number
of different positions overlooking the beach, as well as different camera settings. And for some reason I just keep
coming back to inbuilt HDR. It's not a good idea, I know that now, but I still hadn't fully
figured that out at the time and I wanted something a bit
brighter and better exposed that I could post quickly
to Instagram Stories, so HDR gave me that option. So after I came to my senses, I shot in RAW and got this shot. That was taken with my
selfie stick fully extended and held over the edge of the cliff with a self timer of five seconds to give me time to put my
phone down, strike a pose. I'm happy with the final image. It probably took me 20
attempts as do most locations, but that's why you do it. So finally you get the perfect shot with the perfect exposure,
the perfect camera placement, the perfect everything. You just got to do it if
you want to get your photo as close to a 10 out of 10 as possible. Next, we visited the
famous black sand beach. And this place was like
I stepped to a dream, a beach filled with black sand. Like that even exists? It's so funny how simple things when you just change the color or something you associate
one color to your entire life, suddenly this has this
magical quality to it. I mean who drives two
hours from a major city to go to a beach and not swim? Well, people in Iceland do. And even though we have the best beaches in the world in Australia, this beach has had something
so satisfying about it. And of course, I knew it was going to
look satisfying on camera. I started by taking a bunch of selfies with my Z1 on a selfie stick, just holding it out near the water. I knew the contrast of the black sand with the white sea foam from the water would look incredible for
my camera's perspective. So the aim was to capture the
contrast as best as possible. Which meant I had to
take quite a few shots because water is unpredictable and you just don't know when
the waves are gonna crash and when the best-looking sea foam is going to be near the camera. So after running around and
looking like a complete idiot, I set up the camera on a monopod and I put it as close to
the water as I safely could and I waited for a wave to come and just move past the
bottom of the monopod. I wanted to capture this moment in as many ways as possible, which is one of my next weapon of choice was the Insta360 EVO, and I snapped off a few
3D shots of me and Olafur as well as me on my own. Sorry, I can only show them
to you here as flat photos, but I'll put a link down
there to view them in 3D, if you want to take a look
at them on VR in a headset. So after having more fun
than a kid on Christmas Day, I found this awesome cave that I want to take some
test shots in with the Z1. So I set it up at eye
level and got this shot with extremely impressive dynamic range after editing in Adobe Camera
Raw inside of Photoshop. Next, we went to Vik Beach which is really close to the other beach, however, it's much bigger and there was barely
anyone around over there. Which meant, Vik was our 360 playground. I got some more Z1 shots with my monopod, some of them turned out great, some of them didn't turn up great at all. And after getting basically every possible variation of 360 photo with the black sand and the
water, I knew it was drone time. Of course, Olafur had
already beaten me to it, and took all of those amazing
b-roll shots you just saw. But I didn't care. I wasn't going to let
his magic drone hands discourage me from getting some
kind of shot from my drone. So I got two panorama shots
of the beach with my Mavic Air from two slightly different angles. I have this thing with flying drones that I like trying to
capture low perspectives. Maybe it's because I don't
want my drone to crash. But there's still some really
unique perspective you can get from being four or five meters up as opposed to one or 200. So I had the idea that I
would lay down on the beach and take a panorama just meters above me. And the end result was
actually not too bad. I flew it as low as I could, which ended up being maybe
a meter above my body. Yeah, look, it's the same perspective as if I had used selfie
stick just above me and held it in my hand,
but I want to try anyway. I don't know if I'll
do much with that shot, but it was fun to try. Meanwhile, the master of drones got this. (melodious instrumental music) Around this point I realized this was a moment I was
going to remember forever. To be in such an amazing
and picturesque place so far from home doing what I love most, being creative and having fun. I couldn't believe that one
might be bucket list items was in the process of being checked off. Time flew that day and by the
time we were ready to leave it was 10:00pm already. And I thought, you know what, one last starfish for the
road isn't gonna hurt anyone. We were two hours from the city and by the time it reached
midnight we were four hours away and we were somewhere
in the heart of Iceland. After passing one beautiful
landscape after another we finally decided to stop and capture these beautiful rivers flowing through what
once were lava fields. All day I've been thinking
about this shot I wanted to get and it was going to be
called sunnies @ midnight. And it was midnight and we were at the perfect
location to take it. We thought it would be cool to stand in the middle of a riverbed because it was still shallow enough. We put our sunnies on because the sun was
still out at this point. Turn the camera on, put it
into HDR mode, snap my photo, and had it uploaded to
Facebook and Instagram within 60 seconds. Yeah, I don't know, somehow
there was still phone reception in the middle of nowhere in Iceland. At this point, the sun
set as much as it can, which means it basically
just dipped below the horizon but it was still bright out enough to see, and the four hours of
golden hour had begun. We got some seriously epic
drone shots at this location. These were by far the best
drone shots I'd ever taken. I was so proud of myself. I'm like, how did that even happen? Like, was that me? This river we were next
to was just incredible because it started as one
then it split into two then three then four, then each individual
river would split off, so it looked almost like veins traveling through the landscape. It was so amazing to think that we were the only people here, we hadn't seen anyone else for hours. It was just us and mother nature. (melodious instrumental music) We then did what any dedicated
photographer would do, we kept driving into the
Icelandic wilderness, moving further and further
away from civilization with every hilltop and every valley. Our final stop was around 1:30am, and it was at the top of a volcano that was 60 kilometers all the way around. This place had to be as close
to the middle of nowhere as you could possibly get. All right, so it's close
in 2:00am right now. We've been shooting for about 13 hours. And this is a massive crater. By this point, the sun was
already beginning to rise. I was taking some Instagram Stories and Oli with doing his thing, taking one stunning shot after the next. At this point I chose not to fly my drone because this place was massive and it was getting kind of windy, not to mention a little bit too low light for my limited drone shooting experience. So instead I took some 360s with my Z1, which turned out, not good. I never usually stay up past midnight, so my mind was kind of going by that point and I was starting to forget some basic photography principles, like you can't do a jumping
shot in low-light in HDR mode. And my eye for composition
was kinda starting to fade. I think it was around zero
degrees at that point, and extremely windy, so that's when I finally
became just a spectator. When he was finished we
decided to call it a night and begin our four-hour
journey back to Reykjavik. I fought to stay awake
in the car ride home and I think that's a
fight I probably lost. By the time we got back
to my hotel around 6:00am, I was in bed within second. Oh I was so tired. So I had an epic four hours sleep, and then the final day in Iceland begun. I decided to spend my final
day at the Blue Lagoon. I brought my suitcase, my
mountain of gear, everything. This was my final stop before the airport, so I decided to make a day of it. When I got there I went
for a swim in the Lagoon and just let myself be a tourists and relax without taking photos for a bit. Then I got out my waterproof
camera, the GoPro Fusion, and took a few shots that turned out okay. After my swim I went for a walk around the surroundings of the Blue Lagoon to get some final shot with the Z1. And I've got to say they
turned out super nice, this location was so good for 360. So as much as I wanted to just
go to the airport and sleep, I knew there was one more
opportunity waiting to be taken. For this first shot I use the self-timer and a fast shutter speed to make sure I'll be
captured sharply in the air. I also deliberately lined
up my shadow with the camera to avoid exposure issues. Same thing here with this shot, except this time I'm standing. With this one I held the camera on a selfie stick above my head and captured water on both sides. And in the end it looked
great in both 360 mode and edited as a tiny planet. What more could you ask for? The evening had come pretty quickly and I had to return to the airport so I could begin my next adventure. So yeah, that was my crazy,
amazing adventure in Iceland. I got my best content ever there and I'm just so glad I did it. A lot of times you just think
about stuff and don't do. This time I did. If you want to see any of
my content from Iceland, you can find it on my Instagram page, the interactive 360s on my Facebook page and the 3D shots on my VeeR page. Link them all down there. And by the way, a massive, enormous thanks
to my friend Olafur, the Icelandic 360 photographer, for showing me so many
amazing hidden landscapes. And I would strongly suggest
you check out his work because it's next level. He makes me look like an amateur. And every time I see his shots, I'm super inspired to go out and shoot and create amazing shots of my own. He's also responsible for all of the amazing
drone shots in this video. I hope this video inspired you to do something on your bucket list. Go to a place on your bucket list, because if not now, when? Life is short, there's
no better time than now. Bye. (melodious instrumental music)
