Ian Plant explores the Land of Fire and Ice with the new Tamron SP 15-30mm VC lens

By Jenn Gidman
Images by Ian Plant

A trip to Iceland in the dead of winter may not be the first destination that comes to most travelers' minds, but for nature photographer Ian Plant, the mountainous island nation was just what he was looking for. "Iceland has many beautiful natural features, but I specifically traveled there in late January/early February to photograph glacial ice caves and the aurora borealis," he says.

Ian knew he would need an adaptable zoom lens capable of capturing everything from the intricate ice patterns and spectacular light show in the sky to the swirling waves at the foot of Vesturhorn mountain. The Tamron SP 15-30mm VC lens proved the perfect companion on his journey to the Land of Fire and Ice. "The best lenses combine technical excellence with a flexible design that enhances your creative opportunities rather than limiting them," he says. "The 15-30mm does exactly this: Its generous zoom range gave me the ability to fine-tune my framing and composition, while the ultra-wide 15mm angle of view allowed me to show that world in a fresh and compelling way."

A moisture-resistant construction ensured extra protection for the 15-30 lens in Iceland's unpredictable weather conditions. "Although it's a photographer's playground there, Iceland could also be called Rainland," Ian says. "There's a lot of precipitation. Every time I've gone, the good shooting days are usually a small percentage of the overall time I spend there; you have to take a two- or three-week trip just to get a few nice photo ops."

The ultra-wide angle of view on the 15-30mm was especially helpful when Ian was working in the relatively tight quarters of the ice caves nestled in Icelandic glaciers. "Sometimes the caves were rather expansive and would open up, but other times the ceiling would only be about 8 feet tall, so I'd have only 2 or 3 feet above my head," he explains. "Getting down there wasn't easy, either: I went to one cave where I had to cross the glacier with crampons and ice axes and spend an hour just getting into the cave. But once I was down there, the 15-30 allowed me to capture the perspective I wanted without having to crop elements I hoped to get into the image."

Although he had to work with exposures that were several seconds long ("it definitely wasn't as bright as it was on the surface"), Ian says the light was surprisingly good down in the caves. "They're fairly well lit because parts of them are open to the sky—even in the deepest part of the cave I had a lot of light reflecting down into it," he says. "And the colors in there—some of the blues were absolutely electric. Plus, at 15mm I was able to capture a dazzling array of ice patterns, which would have been impossible if I had been working with a longer focal length."

The 15-30's design helped control distortion and chromatic aberrations that can often plague wide-angle lenses. "Image quality is of utmost concern to me, and the 15-30mm doesn't disappoint, offering corner-to-corner sharpness even at wide apertures," Plant says.

Nowhere was that sharpness more obvious than when Ian captured the texture of the rippled sands in front of the Vesturhorn. "I was lucky with that shot," he says. "It got very cold and a frost formed on the sand, which made the ripples more defined. An hour after sunrise, though, all that frost disappeared and I couldn't see the ripples as well. But the 15-30 allowed me to capture every frost dot."

That sharpness was also critical for Ian's aurora borealis images. "The aurora is very active in Iceland in the winter, but you need clear skies, which doesn't happen that often there," he says. "I would check out aurora forecasts every night, but out of the two weeks I was there, I only saw the aurora three nights, and only one of those nights at the East Fjords was worth photographing."

The 15-30's fast F/2.8 maximum aperture and Vibration Compensation (VC) image stabilization feature helped ensure sharp, vibrant images, even in low-light conditions. "The low light required me to shoot at F/2.8 or F/4," Ian says. "Being able to shoot wide open, and knowing my images would come out sharp, allowed me to focus my energies on the artistic aspects of the scene."

Because the aurora moves, Ian had to resort to relatively short exposures. "You want to avoid having exposures that are longer than 30 seconds," he says. "Otherwise the sky will become a green smear. I would try to get something between 15 and 30 seconds, maybe even shorter than that."

That fast aperture also allowed Ian to soften backgrounds or foregrounds while concentrating on details, while the 15-30's minimum focusing distance of 11 inches over the entire focal-length range resulted in stunning wide-macro effects. "The 15-30mm was especially useful whenever I needed an extra-wide field of view to simultaneously capture a compelling foreground and a dramatic sky," he explains. "For example, when photographing glacial ice washed ashore on the coast of the Jokulsarlon glacial lake, I was able to get close to the ice to give it extra emphasis in the composition, but still include a lot of beautiful sunset clouds."

Ian was also able to set up a shot of the majestic Vesturhorn in the background as he played around with the effects of the water in the foreground. "Whenever I'm working with water, I use long exposures to create foregrounds that otherwise wouldn't exist," he explain. "In this case, it's the shape of the wave as it comes in that creates that compelling foreground element. Having the Vesturhorn in the back just completes the picture."

To see more of Ian Plant's photography, go to www.ianplant.com.