Iceland photo tours: is a photo package worth it?

Pay for photos where you can’t take them yourself. On a glacier in crampons, or inside an ice cave, you’re holding an ice axe and the light is hard to get right, so a guide who is also a photographer earns the money. On the Golden Circle or the Reykjanes peninsula, you can stand at every viewpoint with your own phone, and the package is a nice extra rather than the point.

Two different things with the same name

“Photo tour” covers two products, and it’s worth knowing which one you’re buying.

A photo package means the guide takes pictures of you. You do the tour as normal, they shoot as you go, and a set of edited photos arrives by email a week or two later. You don’t need a camera.

A photography tour means a photographer teaches you. You bring a camera and lenses, and the time is spent on settings, composition and waiting for light. You come home with your own pictures, not pictures of you.

For the northern lights, where the photographer question is different again, see our photographer vs regular northern lights guide.

On the ice: where the package is worth it

Icarus Rising, based near Höfn, run their glacier and ice cave tours with guides who are also photographers. Ice Cave Captured from €182 is three and a half hours on a Vatnajökull outlet glacier and into an ice cave, with helmet, harness and crampons. Groups are ten at most. It includes two edited photos per person, sent within 14 days. Two sounds few. But they are the two shots you’d want, of you in blue ice, and you can’t get them with your own phone while wearing gloves. It starts at 12:00 and has dates from early October.

For more pictures and a longer day, the Glacier Photoshoot Adventure in Skaftafell from €201 is five hours on the ice with a 4x4 drive in, and includes five edited photos per person: portraits, action and landscape. It runs all year. Minimum age for both is eight.

The catch: Icarus Rising charge 10% of the price whenever you cancel, however early. Most day tours we sell are free to cancel up to 24 hours before. That’s worth knowing if your dates might move.

On the road: nice, not necessary

Adventure Vikings’ Golden Circle and Lunch at Friðheimar - with photos from €212 is seven hours from Reykjavík, with lunch at the tomato farm included, and the guide takes pictures of you at the stops and uploads them for you afterwards. The tour doesn’t say how many. Minimum age is twelve. If you’d book a small-group Golden Circle with lunch anyway, the photos come with it. We wouldn’t pick this tour for the photos alone. Þingvellir, Geysir and Gullfoss are easy to photograph yourself.

Icelandic Roamers add a package to their private jeep tours. The Reykjanes Peninsula private tour from €1,314 is six hours in a Land Rover Defender, priced for the car, with 15 edited photos within seven days. The South Coast and Katla Ice Cave private tour from €1,978 is twelve hours with the same 15 photos. For a family or a small group on a private tour, 15 good pictures of all of you together are a genuine souvenir. For a couple, it’s a lot of money for the car.

If you want to learn, not pose

The Ice Cave Private Photography Tour from €1,095 is the other kind. It’s four hours from 07:30, priced for a group of up to five, and the guide teaches focus stacking, bracketing and panoramas in the caves and then on the glacier. You need your own camera, ideally three lenses and a tripod. It’s for people who take photography seriously. If you’re asking whether you need it, you don’t.

Our honest take

Book a package on the ice, skip it on the road. Ice Cave Captured is the one we’d book: the price is close to an ordinary ice cave tour, and the two photos are ones you can’t take yourself. If you’re doing a glacier hike from Skaftafell anyway, the five-photo version is worth the few extra euros. On the Golden Circle or Reykjanes, spend the money on a better tour and take your own pictures. And if the cancellation terms worry you, wait until your dates are firm before you book the Icarus Rising tours.