Bjargtangar and the cliff edge

Látrabjarg runs fourteen kilometres along the sea at the far end of the Westfjords, rising from about 40 metres at its eastern end to 440 at Heiðnakinn. The car park sits at Bjargtangar, beside a small lighthouse, on the westernmost point of Europe; from there a rough path follows the cliff top eastward and climbs as it goes, so you choose your height and your view.

The famous frame is the puffins. From roughly late April to early August they nest in burrows in the grassy lip of the cliff, and generations of undisturbed nesting have left them remarkably unbothered by people — photographers lie flat on the turf and work at two or three metres. Lie down well back from the drop, use a longer lens rather than closing the distance, and never lean over the edge for a downward angle.

For human subjects, the cliff itself is the picture: put your couple on the grass slope with the wall of rock and the sea receding behind them, and let the scale carry the frame. Late evening is the hour — the cliff faces west and north-west, so the sun runs along the face and lights the birds from the side, and in June and July that light lasts past midnight.

The hazards here are serious and specific. The edge is overhanging turf with nothing underneath it; it collapses, and people have died. Stay several metres back at all times, keep children close, and treat any wind above a stiff breeze as a reason to shoot from lower down. The last stretch of Road 612 is gravel, narrow and slow, effectively a summer road, and there is no fuel, food or shelter at the cliff.