John Gardner Photography

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John Gardner Photography

Welcome to my page! I’m John Gardner — photographer, storyteller, and eternal optimist behind Silver Lining Lens. Thank you for following!!

The brand reflects what my work has always been about: seeing life’s beauty, hope, and wonder through the lens.

09/07/2026

After all that wild Iceland… welcome to Reykjavík. 🇮🇸

For weeks I’ve been sharing the Iceland that probably comes to mind first….glaciers, waterfalls, volcanoes, black beaches, puffins and landscapes that sometimes don’t quite look real.

But Iceland has another side.

Reykjavík.

It’s a city where colorful buildings and small streets sit alongside some striking modern architecture and where the ocean and mountains never seem very far away.

The unmistakable Hallgrímskirkja rises above the city, while down along the waterfront, Harpa Concert Hall looks completely different depending on the light and the angle you’re photographing it from. Its geometric glass exterior was probably my favorite architectural subject in Reykjavík.

After spending so much of the trip pointing the Nikon at mountains, it was actually fun to start looking for lines, shapes, reflections and little pieces of city life instead.

Still Iceland.

Just a very different version of it. 📷🇮🇸

📍 Reykjavík, Iceland

09/06/2026

Just when I thought Iceland had shown me everything… I looked up. 🌈☁️🇮🇸

I spent most of this trip watching the landscape…..waterfalls, glaciers, volcanoes, mountains and black-sand beaches.

Turns out the sky deserved some attention too.

We came across some absolutely wild cloud formations, including this incredible burst of color around the sun.

The rainbow-like colors are an atmospheric phenomenon called cloud iridescence. Under the right conditions, sunlight interacting with tiny water droplets or ice crystals in a cloud can produce these beautiful pastel colors.

And like so many things in Iceland, it didn’t last long.

A few minutes later, the light changed and the show was over.

Fortunately, the camera was already in my hand. 📷😂

Sometimes the best photograph of the day isn’t where you planned to point the camera.

Remember to look up.

📍 Iceland 🇮🇸
📷 John Gardner Photography

09/05/2026

Growing tomatoes in Iceland? 🍅🇮🇸

After glaciers, waterfalls, volcanoes and black-sand beaches, here’s something I definitely didn’t expect to become one of the more interesting stops of the trip:

A tomato farm. In Iceland.

At Friðheimar, tomatoes are grown year-round inside enormous greenhouses despite Iceland’s cold climate and limited winter daylight.

The secret is very Icelandic.

Geothermal energy.

Naturally hot water provides heat for the greenhouses, while supplemental lighting helps give the plants what Iceland’s long, dark winters can’t. Even more interesting, bees are brought in to pollinate the tomato plants.

And then there’s the best part.

You get to eat among the tomato plants. 🍅

The restaurant is actually inside the greenhouse, with tomato soup and other tomato-based dishes served just a few feet from where they’re being grown.

Iceland had already shown us what it could do with fire and ice.

Apparently it does pretty well with tomatoes too. 😂

📍 Friðheimar | Iceland 🇮🇸

09/04/2026

The Waterfall of the Gods. 🇮🇸

There are waterfalls in Iceland that impress you with their height.

Goðafoss does it differently.

The Skjálfandafljót River spreads across a horseshoe-shaped cascade before plunging into the gorge below creating one of those scenes where it’s almost impossible to decide where to point the camera.

And then Iceland decided to throw in a rainbow. 🌈

But the name may be even more interesting than the view.

Goðafoss translates to “Waterfall of the Gods.” According to Icelandic tradition, around the year 1000, lawspeaker Þorgeir Ljósvetningagoði helped decide that Iceland would officially adopt Christianity. The story says that afterward, he threw his statues of the old Norse gods into this waterfall.

Whether every detail of the legend happened exactly that way or not, standing here more than a thousand years later makes the name feel pretty appropriate.

This one was high on my Iceland photography list.

It didn’t disappoint.

📍 Goðafoss | North Iceland 🇮🇸

09/03/2026

In Iceland, sometimes the waterfalls don’t even have names. 🇮🇸

After yesterday’s rugged volcanic coastline, we continued across the Snæfellsnes Peninsula and the landscape changed yet again.

Green mountains rose around us, clouds spilled over their tops, and waterfalls seemed to appear everywhere you looked, some tumbling hundreds of feet down the mountainsides and others simply threading their way through the moss and rock.

That’s something photographs don’t quite prepare you for in Iceland.

It’s not only the famous waterfalls that make you stop.

Sometimes it’s the unnamed one you spot through the window. Or the patch of sunlight that suddenly breaks through the clouds and turns an ordinary mountainside brilliant green.

Those unexpected scenes ended up being some of my favorites from the entire trip.

📍 Snæfellsnes Peninsula, Iceland 🇮🇸

09/02/2026

Iceland apparently wasn’t finished showing off. 🇮🇸

Along the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, the landscape changed again, this time into a coastline of towering basalt cliffs, hidden coves and rock formations carved by the relentless North Atlantic.

This is the area around Arnarstapi, where Iceland’s volcanic past is written right into the coastline.

One of the highlights is the natural stone arch at Gatklettur formed as the sea slowly worked its way through the volcanic rock. But what fascinated me just as much were the cliffs themselves. Get close enough and you can see the layers, columns and strange shapes created as lava cooled here long ago.

And then you look across the water at those mountains disappearing beneath the clouds and remember…

This is all on one little peninsula.

Every time I thought I understood what Iceland looked like, it changed the rules. 📷🇮🇸

📍 Arnarstapi | Snæfellsnes Peninsula, Iceland

09/01/2026

A lighthouse at the edge of Iceland. 🇮🇸

After yesterday’s journey through the volcanic landscape of Snæfellsjökull National Park, we eventually found ourselves at Malariff where this stark white lighthouse stands watch over the North Atlantic.

And photographically, I loved the simplicity of it.

A white tower. A tiny splash of red. Windswept grass. Black volcanic rock. And that enormous Icelandic sky.

Snæfellsjökull National Park is unusual because its protected landscape stretches all the way from the glacier and mountaintops to the sea and standing here, you really feel that connection between the volcano and the ocean.

Sometimes Iceland overwhelms you with waterfalls, glaciers and enormous landscapes.

And sometimes all you need is one lighthouse.

📍 Malariff, Snæfellsjökull National Park, Iceland

08/31/2026

Iceland just keeps changing the scenery. 🇮🇸

One of the things that surprised me most about Iceland was how quickly the landscape could completely reinvent itself.

On the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, we entered Snæfellsjökull National Park, where a glacier-capped volcano towers over ancient lava fields and a rugged North Atlantic coastline.

Snæfellsjökull has been one of Iceland’s most recognizable landmarks for centuries and it even inspired Jules Verne, who used it as the entrance to the underground world in Journey to the Center of the Earth.

Along the coast, the landscape gets even wilder. The dramatic Lóndrangar sea cliffs are actually remnants of an ancient volcanic crater that has been slowly carved away by the ocean.

Black volcanic stones cover the shoreline, fishing boats work the waters offshore, and little splashes of color from fishing gear somehow look even brighter against all that dark lava.

This was one of those places where every direction seemed to tell you a little more about how Iceland was made.

Fire. Ice. Ocean. And a whole lot of time. 📷

📍 Snæfellsjökull National Park | Snæfellsnes Peninsula, Iceland

08/30/2026

Ísafjörður | A Little Town Surrounded by Giants 🇮🇸

One of the things that struck me most about Iceland wasn’t simply the size of the landscapes.

It was how people have learned to live inside them.

Tucked deep into the Westfjords, Ísafjörður is a small fishing town surrounded by steep, flat-topped mountains and water in nearly every direction. Walking around the harbor, you see working boats, weathered buildings, colorful homes and churches, while these enormous mountains seem to rise almost straight out of town.

And that’s what I loved photographing here.

Not one famous waterfall. Not one iconic landmark.

Just the everyday details of life in a place that feels wonderfully far removed from the rest of the world.

Old fishing boats showing every year they’ve spent at sea. Sailboats dwarfed by mountains. Bright buildings beneath massive rock walls. And everywhere you look, another reminder of just how small we are compared with the landscape around us.

Sometimes the places you know the least about before a trip end up being the ones you’re happiest you discovered. And by the way, the people of this town are among the kindest I have ever met!!

📍 Ísafjörður, Westfjords, Iceland 🇮🇸

08/29/2026

🇮🇸 ICELAND THROUGH MY LENS — KIRKJUFELL

Some places in Iceland feel familiar before you ever see them in person.

Kirkjufell was one of those places for me.

Rising above the Snæfellsnes Peninsula near the small town of Grundarfjörður, its distinctive shape has made it one of Iceland’s most recognizable and most photographed mountains.

And if it looks familiar for another reason, there’s a good chance you’re a Game of Thrones fan. 😉

Kirkjufell became the “mountain shaped like an arrowhead” beyond the Wall in the series.

But standing there with Kirkjufellsfoss rushing in the foreground, I wasn’t thinking much about television.

I was thinking about photography.

Mountain. Waterfall. River. Green Icelandic landscape. And, amazingly, some blue sky.

It’s one of those scenes where you keep moving a few feet, looking through the camera and thinking…

Okay, maybe THIS is the shot.

Then you move again. 😂

I understand why photographers have been drawn here for years.

📍 Kirkjufell & Kirkjufellsfoss
Snæfellsnes Peninsula, Iceland 🇮🇸

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