Patreksfjörður harbour

Patreksfjörður is the town everything out here runs on: about six hundred people, a working fishing harbour, the last fuel before Látrabjarg, and the guesthouses that make an early cliff session possible. It sits on a shelf under steep brown mountains at the head of its fjord, houses in white, red and blue stepping up the slope behind the quay.

As a photo location it earns its place two ways. The harbour itself gives working-boat texture — steel hulls, nets, ropes, reflections in the basin — a completely different register from the emptiness of the cliffs, and useful for a session that needs variety. And the fjord road east of town gives the wide view: the water, the town small under the mountain wall, and on a calm evening a perfect double image in the fjord.

This is also the district's weather insurance. When wind closes the cliff top or rain flattens Rauðasandur, the harbour still photographs, and there is a café, a pool and a shop for warming up between sets — none of which exist at the other three spots.

Light comes late and leaves early in winter because of the mountains: the fjord walls block low sun for weeks in midwinter, and the town famously loses the direct sun altogether for part of the season. Summer compensates with light until well after midnight. Keep off working quays and out of the way of anyone landing fish; harbours are workplaces, and the crews are generous about photographers who stay clear of the business.