This article provides an account of a field trip that I made to Iceland. Through the writing I seek to convey a sense of the visit which served as an occasion for reflection on landscape/protagonist relations and practice-led research, in addition to providing an opportunity to challenge my thinking in relation to photography. I will begin by discussing Iceland’s living landscape, firstly through an introduction to the geothermal terrain of Hveragarði, which I will look at in relation to Emily Brady’s articulation of the contemporary sublime and, what she describes as, ‘difficult aesthetic experiences’. Following on from this I will discuss my experience of a lava field in North-West Iceland, seen through a Deleuzian lens. I will introduce Gilles Deleuze’s writing on the fold making specific reference to the lava field as a contorted landscape from which the subject emerges. Finally, I will consider the lava field as a happening of landscape which is directly inspired by Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophical articulation of the world as event ‘a nexus of actual occasions’.