You need light. That’s all.

Photography is very simple: you see something, close one eye and press the button. You get what you see.

Or is it that simple?

For almost 30 years, I and Ragnar Axelsson, aka RAX, a good friend and fellow photographer, have taken a day off together once in a while to do what we like the most: take pictures, as we do day in and day out.

And the strangest thing is that he could be on Mars and I on Venus. The same place, same light, different eye, very different images.

So different that you would never have guessed that it was at the same place at the same time.

RAX’s photographs are mostly black and white, Leica 35mm photography. An interesting personal composition, his images have very strong personal fingerprints.

His next book, Last Days of the Arctic, is out soon by www.crymogea.is, the same publisher which issued my latest book, Africa, The Future of Football.

Last Days of the Arctic is a fantastic book, spanning 25 years of RAX’s work in photography, the result of his travels above the Arctic Circle.

Innra Hvanngil canyon, east Iceland, June 2010, FUJI GX 680III, 250mm, Velvia.

But I use bigger cameras than RAX and a tripod. Today, my favorite camera is the big FUJI GX 680III, the perfect camera for me.

The Fuji perfectly matches my eye. I know beforehand which lens works and what perspective the motive craves. It’s the best camera ever made.

Another camera I like a lot is the (old) Hasselblad V system with its square image and next-to-perfect Carl Zeiss lenses.

SWC, my favorite, is the camera I would choose to take with me to a desert island if I could only take one camera with me.

Five or six years ago Hasselblad came up with a modern camera with auto focus, auto exposure and a digital back (I use the film version).

I do like the camera, but not nearly as much as the as the old V system, which I use nine out of ten times when I’m using the Hasselblads.

I see better with the V system but best with the FUJI GX.

But some things I can’t see or understand. Not even with the FUJI.

Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries Jón Bjarnason wants Iceland to stop its accession negotiations with the European Union. Before they have even started, before we know what we will get. That is against his own government’s declaration.

He should step down. Resign, right now.

Bjarnason is a part of a league within the Left-Greens—the party which forms the coalition in Iceland’s government with the Social Democrats—along with people like Ögmundur Jónasson and Gudfrídur Lilja Grétarsdóttir who seem to know everything better than rest of the party, and the rest of us.

People who have such strong opinions that every other sentence they say is: “I will not support this government if...”

In politics you wheel and deal and make compromises, but these members of the Left-Greens have such a strong will that they don’t ever make compromises and are always right… Event if they are left, red and green. Like Anne of Green Gables.

The result is that the majority coalition of Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir’s government is constantly under threat from Ögmundur and co. Not good.

Maybe the best solution is for Iceland and P.E.I. to become one. Iceland should become a part of P.E.I.

They have a strong currency, so negotiations with the European Union would be off the table.

The Magma Energy dispute would be resolved once and for all, plus, their yearly crop is 4.5 million kilogram of Superfood blueberries, packed with antioxidants and phytoflavinoids.

The statistics say that Icelanders hold the world record in eating blueberries per capita.

And not to forget that blueberries help you see things more clearly, which is necessary for politicians like Ögmundur, and even better for photographers like me and RAX.

Yes, I have seen the light, P.E.I and I.

Páll Stefánsson – ps@icelandreview.com