Return to Iceland

Iceland stays with you. The first visit in the mid-1990s left an impression that was difficult to explain at the time, a landscape so vast, so untamed and so completely absorbing that it sits in a category of its own. Twelve years later, a Rip Curl assignment to test heated wetsuits in extreme conditions brought me back.

This image was made at Jökulsárlón Lake, on the edge of Vatnajökull National Park, where glacial ice meets the ocean in a landscape defined by cold light and constant movement. Adam Wickwire in his black wetsuit, board in hand, mid-leap from the ice into that ice blue water. The scale of the landscape makes him small. The moment makes him the only thing you look at.