The first viewing platform

The main platform sits just off the car park, and the view from it is the postcard: clear water emerging from under the edge of the Hallmundarhraun lava field in dozens of separate falls, running for hundreds of metres along the far bank and dropping into a river the colour of milky glacier water.

Because it is level and immediate, this is one of the few Icelandic landscape frames that works for grandparents, small children and long dresses without any negotiation. Compose wide to get the length of the falls, or long to isolate a section where the water fans over the lava. The best frames put people on the platform's rail line in the near third, with the falls running away behind.

The falls face roughly north-west, so afternoon and evening light warms them, while a bright overcast holds the detail in the white water. In late September the birch scrub above the falls turns gold and orange and doubles the colour in the frame. In winter the platform ices over — light traction spikes make the difference — and the lava beyond the railing is unstable, so the marked viewpoints are the whole plan.