Since the UEFA European Championship 2016 at latest, where Iceland’s team made the soccer event even a MUCH greater spectacle, winning fans from all the other nations, Iceland’s popularity as a travel destination has considerably increased. When talented Instagram photographers traveled to the far north as well and took pictures of the barren scenery, the endless territories, the Iceland ponies, the waterfalls, the ice caves and the hot springs, the hype really started. Somehow almost every one of us has some friend who has been to Iceland or who has booked a plane ticket there already. Some of you may even count among the lucky ones who have traveled there themselves.
Speaking for myself, I can’t imagine a more exciting photo destination and definitely would like to go there as soon as possible. I regularly browse the Iceland tags on Instagram and Flickr to discover some breathtaking pictures and incredibly talented photographers. Thus I came across Matej Kriz. At first sight, his photos taken inside the ice caves of Iceland look like paintings. The colors are so incredibly strong and everything has a touch of a fantasy world. Matej, who doesn’t like post-editing his photos, creates these masterpieces without any photo editing software and despite of the (as you can imagine) anything but good lighting conditions in such caves. One of his statements for whom I admire him a lot as a photographer is:
„The] beauty of photography is in [the] opportunity to catch [the] proper moment, capture emotions and feel into one scene.”
With this he’s perfectly right, I think. Although I’m not an opponent of Photoshop, Lightroom etc., I also have the feeling that such software diminishes the value of the photos in some way and makes them a bit less special. Creating pictures like Kriz does only with a certain technique and probably countless tries really is something totally different than sitting several hours at a computer screen. Don’t you agree?
Photos: Matěj Kříž
Foto[GEN]ERELL 