From The Land of Fire & Ice

Despite its name, Iceland is supposed to have surprisingly mild winters for a country at that latitude due to the effects of the Atlantic Gulf Stream. This was not the case for us as we arrived in what was described by our guides as the winter with the heaviest snowfall in the past 14 years! Still, the snow made the desolate landscape look even more alien and out-of-this-world, giving me the opportunity to capture some unusual and dramatic landscape pictures. The island is the most volcanically-active place in the world, sitting right on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge straddling the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates. There is a delicate balance between the Arctic cold and the built-up geothermal heat beneath the land. With global warming, there is a growing concern that this balance can be disrupted, leading to more violent volcanic explosions like the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in 2010 which severely disrupted European air-travel.