Northern Hemisphere Travels
Storyteller: Karen Ishiguro, NZ
What were the reasons for your travels? What compelled you to tell your travel story in a photo book?
We were living in London and we wanted to travel as much as we could before we came back home to New Zealand. We're both photographers (karenishiguro.com and jamesfwalton.com) and we wanted to share our images not just through Facebook or Instagram, but in a more meaningful way. We wanted to see our work in a beautiful printed format and give each image the respect it deserved. We didn't want our images to die in a hard drive somewhere.
What is your favorite image in the book and why?
This is SUCH a hard one, but my favorite section is definitely the Iceland one (starting on page 64). As you can see, we gave each destination about 1-2 pages, but for Iceland we had too many photos that we loved so we decided to just create a section just for it.
What is your favorite story behind a single shot in the book?
Iceland has always been a place we've wanted to visit together. I had been there alone about 5 years ago, but only stayed in the Reykjavik area, so this time we wanted to hire a car and drive around the island. Some roads were extremely treacherous (we went around October so the roads were starting to get icy), but the adventure was unforgettable. I think my favorite spot was the ice cave that we went to. We hiked with our guide for about an hour to find this incredible natural 'cave' that was all made of ice. It's a natural phenomenon that happens when the temperatures and conditions are just right and the glaciers open up to create a small cave. Often you go there again and it's already gone by the next day. It was honestly like nothing I had ever seen. We were in the caves for about 1.5 hours but it went by so quickly. If you're ever heading that way, make it your No.1 priority to go! However don't go there without a professional guide as they can be very dangerous!
