Faroe Islands

The Faroe Islands are eighteen islands in the North Atlantic, roughly halfway between Norway and Iceland, and they look like something that was designed to be difficult. Green pastures run straight to the edge of cliffs that drop several hundred feet into the ocean. Massive waves come in off open water and break against rock that has been absorbing that force for longer than anyone has been around to watch it. The wind is constant and directional and has a way of reminding you, at inconvenient moments, exactly where you're standing.

What makes the Faroes so distinctive as a place to photograph is the compression of opposites: the pastoral and the violent, the soft green of the hillsides and the hard grey of the sea below them, the domesticated and the genuinely exposed. The light shifts fast because the weather shifts fast, and the best photographs here came from staying in a location long enough for the conditions to turn in your favor.