Two Rivers

When I started processing this drone image, I thought something had gone badly wrong with the color. The water seemed almost impossibly different from one side of the river to the other—milky green, blue-gray, and even a narrow band of vivid turquoise.

It turns out the weirdness is real. This is the confluence of the Hvítá and Sog rivers in southern Iceland. Hvítá carries fine glacial sediment from Langjökull, giving it its pale, opaque color, while Sog drains Þingvallavatn and carries much clearer water. Here the two meet and begin forming the Ölfusá, and from the air you can actually see the differently colored waters mixing.

Sometimes Iceland does a better job with the color sliders than I do.