TITLE: Búðakirkja

Iceland’s Búðakirkja (“Black Church of Búðir”) is a lonely structure on the country’s southern coast, surrounded by the natural wonders of the Snæfellsnes peninsula. The church stands inside the Búðahraun lava field, with the Snæfellsjökull Glacier to the west and Faxaflói bay behind it, and is all the more striking for its black exterior. While the effect is enrapturing, the reason for its color is practical—the church’s exterior is coated with pitch tar to protect the lumber from the surrounding elements.

AUTHOR: Nathan Myhrvold (United States)

Nathan Myhrvold is photographer, chef, scientist, and author. As the former chief technology officer of Microsoft, Myhrvold embraces the power of technology to push photographic limits. He and his team build custom cameras, robotics, and software to capture the world in new ways.
Myhrvold’s photography has been featured in publications including Smithsonian Magazine, Digital Photo Pro, Popular Photography, Galerie, and Bloomberg Pursuits. He is the founder of Modernist Cuisine, author of The Photography of Modernist Cuisine, and coauthor of Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, Modernist Cuisine at Home, Modernist Bread, and the forthcoming Modernist Pizza.
He pioneered food photography techniques to take the avant garde photographs in his award-winning cookbooks, which garnered worldwide recognition and led to the opening of Modernist Cuisine Gallery, the first gallery in the world devoted to food photography.
When not photographing food, Myhrvold travels the globe to visually document nature and wildlife. His recent innovations in snowflake photography have resulted in the highest resolution snowflake camera in the world. An avid researcher and lover of space, Myhrvold did postdoctoral cosmology work with Stephen Hawking and is currently developing new astrophotography techniques.