Iceland River Braids

Iceland has been one of my favorite places to visit ever since my first visit there in 2007, and I have been back many times since. My first trip there with a drone was in 2018, and I’ll never forget my first view of Icelandic rivers with their braiding from the air. Since then, I have always brought my drone on every Iceland photographic trip and am always on the lookout for rivers that may have spectacular braiding visible from above. The sensuous and interlocking curves of these braids are the central focal point of any of these images.

I went to check out an area on the Skafta River a few weeks ago that I had visited a few times before, and the braiding here has always been predictably photogenic. When I arrived at my usual takeoff point this time, I was unhappy to see the river was unusually full from bank to bank due to a modest glacial outburst that was occurring, and no braiding was visible from the shore due to the increased flow. I took off anyway, and when I was about 100 feet in the air and looked straight down, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. River braiding like I had never seen before.

In this composition, there is only one small patch of dry shoreline in the lower left corner. Everything else is a river, with this lovely braided channel running down the middle of it. These glacial rivers carry colored minerals and silt that drop out during the journey to the ocean and can look very different from one day to the next and also depending on whether it is sunny or cloudy. I can’t explain why this time was so much more vibrant than my previous visits, but I was one happy photographer to witness it.