Photographers at Mývatn

Each photographer sets their own price for a photoshoot at Mývatn, by duration and the number of edited photos: every package on their profile shows an all-inclusive price, and nothing is added at checkout. A short session stays in one setting, usually the lava formations of Dimmuborgir; a longer shoot rotates through the pseudocraters, the Hverir geothermal field and the Nature Baths, all within twenty minutes' drive. Edited galleries usually arrive within about a week.

Dimmuborgir, the 'dark fortress' of collapsed lava towers whose church-window arches frame couples like gothic architecture; the green rings of the Skútustaðagígar pseudocraters on the south shore, gentle enough for families; the lava pillars and birches of the Höfði peninsula on the lake; and Hverir under Námafjall, a rust-orange plain of boiling mud and roaring steam vents that looks like another planet.

Low sun, whenever it comes: in summer that means late evening, when the midnight sun backlights the steam at Hverir into gold and the midges have usually settled — a breezy day is a blessing here, and a head net lives in every local bag. In winter daylight lasts barely three to four hours this far north, Dimmuborgir turns monochrome under snow, and the steam under the aurora is a frame the south coast cannot match.

One of the best in Iceland: it sits inland in the dry north-east, which gets more clear winter nights than the south coast, and it has foregrounds nowhere else offers — geothermal steam, snow-dusted lava arches and the lake itself. The season runs from September to April; your photographer watches the forecast and calls the night. Mývatn is an hour east of Akureyri on the Ring Road, which is kept open in winter but closes in storms.