Nick Miners Photography

I can sense it -
Some­thing import­ant
Is about to happen

If asked, I would find it impossible to name a favour­ite album, as the answer changes based on my mood, the weather, and the time of day. But there’s no doubt in my mind as to the most import­ant album, one which has argu­ably shaped the very per­son I am today.

In the sum­mer hol­i­day of 1993, dur­ing the hey­day of ITV’s music video show ‘The Chart Show’, my atten­tion was caught by an unusual sight. A young Icelandic singer was fret­ting about the odd things humans do, whilst walk­ing through a bizarre fake forest with assor­ted pup­pet anim­als. And what a voice! I was fas­cin­ated, and in those days, when MP3 down­loads were but a twinkle in the vir­tual eye of a nas­cent inter­net, I had to sat­isfy my curi­os­ity in the only way pos­sible, by pur­chas­ing a CD of Björk’s ‘Debut’ when it was released.

The album was a first for me in sev­eral ways. Trivi­ally, it was my first CD, but more import­antly, it planted in me the seed of my obses­sion with Ice­land and Icelandic music. Here was this girl from a strange land that to most people only exis­ted as a blob on school geo­graphy maps, and whose cap­ital city had an exotic name, com­ing out with some of the most com­pel­ling and ori­ginal music I had heard for years. Until that time my choices of listen­ing had (to my eternal shame) sailed with the winds of pop­u­lar taste; Sting, Annie Len­nox, Mike Old­field, to name but a few; and it took this album to make me real­ise there was so much more out there.

In 1999, 6 years after Björk screeched and wailed her way into our lives (well, those of us who were unfa­mil­iar with The Sug­ar­cubes), I trav­elled to Ice­land for the first time, with my part­ner and our 6-​​month-​​old son, and I was bewitched. I returned to Ice­land as often as time—and my wallet—would allow. Con­fron­ted by scenes such as this, how could I help but redis­cover my love of photography?

Gull­foss, the Golden Falls

Twit­ter, the microb­log­ging ser­vice, and object of the deri­sion of many of the less forward-​​thinking mem­bers of the tra­di­tional press, also had a major part to play in the immin­ent com­ple­tion of an 18 year long per­sonal cycle. A set of black and white images from Iceland’s west­ern fjords region, which I took in May 2009, was extremely well received, and shared by sev­eral people, both within and out­side Ice­land, mak­ing it my most pop­u­lar gal­lery of pho­to­graphs to date. By main­tain­ing links with the people who had pub­li­cised my images, I gained a small but grow­ing net­work of friends who shared a pas­sion for, or lived in, Iceland.

The res­ult­ant increased pro­file of my work brought me to the atten­tion of Coun­ter­feit magazine, a music web­site based in Shef­field, who were look­ing for some pho­to­graphs of a London-​​based, Sheffield-​​born rap­per called The Ruby Kid for an inter­view they were pub­lish­ing. After com­plet­ing the shoot I star­ted ask­ing around to see if there were any other web­sites like Coun­ter­feit, but more local to me, for whom I could do sim­ilar work. The amaz­ing net­work­ing power of the Inter­net brought me to The 405, where I was given the oppor­tun­ity to gain free entry (via photo passes) to end­less gigs in Lon­don to shoot for reviews or photo-​​only ‘In Pic­tures’ features.

It wasn’t long before I real­ised that we could do some­thing par­tic­u­larly spe­cial at The 405 (that’s not to belittle the great work it was already doing), so I sug­ges­ted try­ing for passes to the annual Ice­land Air­waves fest­ival in Octo­ber, with a view to pub­lish­ing a fea­ture focus­ing on the fest­ival as a whole. The edit­or­ial team were all in favour of the idea and, once again through Twitter’s net­work, I was put in touch with the press officer for the fest­ival, who agreed to issue three passes to us. Only a week or so later, it was announced that there would be two spe­cial per­form­ances dur­ing the fest­ival at Reykjavík’s recently com­pleted opera house, Harpa, by none other than the one per­son who is still Iceland’s most fam­ous export: Björk Guðmundsdóttir.

And so I find myself on the brink of an adven­ture that will bring together the holy trin­ity of music, pho­to­graphy and the magical island of Ice­land, and I can trace it all back to one single, cir­cu­lar piece of foil and plastic, imprin­ted with the DNA of my life as it is today.

An aston­ish­ing live per­form­ance from Icelanders FM Bel­fast at Cargo on 1^st June was the first time I had teamed up with a writer for an illus­trated review of a gig. Read the review on the 405’s new look site here.

The Slaughtered Lamb in Clerken­well is a very small, intim­ate venue where Hjaltalín, one of the most pop­u­lar homegrown bands in Ice­land, played a set at the start of their European tour. I went along to take some pic­tures, and also to enjoy what was a very well received and very enter­tain­ing per­form­ance. You can read my review at The 405.

On Wed­nes­day night (2^nd March), I had the immense priv­ilege of shoot­ing the second of two nights where Icelander Ólöf Arnalds played at the Vor­tex Jazz Club in Dal­ston, Lon­don. I had inter­viewed her by email before­hand, and you can read the inter­view, along with a review of the show, at The 405.

I’ve been to loads of places in 2010, as reg­u­lar fol­low­ers of this blog will be aware. Here, for those who are new, and any­one else who might be inter­ested, is a selec­tion of shots from each of the coun­tries, cit­ies and counties I’ve been lucky enough to visit.