It was a privilege to be able to spend some time exploring and capturing the incredible central highlands of Iceland in September 2025. Despite visiting Iceland many times in Winter previously, I've never been able to enter the highlands region because it's only accessible for 4 months of the year, around the Summer months.

I was travelling with a long term workshop client and now good friend Thomas from Switzerland. To explore the highlands you need a well equipped 4WD as it's completely off road and requires many river crossings. Thomas found us a Toyota Prado 4WD with 44 inch wheels and a snorkel which worked really well for the most part.

This particular day we were trying to find a way through the highlands from our hotel to visit a beautiful volcano called Maelifell. We tried a track in from the south western end of the highlands and successfully crossed about 14 small to medium sized river crossings before we came across this stunning volcano. We pulled over and launched our drones. We flew for nearly an hour and although it was around midday by then, we had a brief break in the clouds which allowed some beautiful light to come through. Thankfully, it was just long enough for me to capture this stunning scene.

We hadn't seen another vehicle all day so it was a surprise when a large 4WD super jeep with huge tyres came around the corner. It was a local guide who stopped to warn us about the next river crossing. He explained that the significant recent rainfall had caused the river to rise dramatically. He had just made it through successfully and warned us against attempting it in our Prado.

We continued on to see the crossing for ourselves and sure enough, we agreed with his advice. The river was flowing strongly and we weren't game to try and cross it in the Prado! This meant we had to turn around and follow the track all the way back to the south, crossing all those 14 river crossings again before heading back out of the highlands.

We did eventually make it to Maelifell via an alternative route much later in the day but the best light had already passed. Thankfully, this part of our journey wasn't a waste of time. In fact this is my favourite photo from my first trip to the incredible iceland highlands.