Braided Flows – Glacial Rivers From the Air

In the landscape photography community, Iceland is a prime location as there are so many bucket list shots to be made here. Perhaps some of the most sought after photographs, are those taken of the beautiful braided rivers which can only be seen from the sky.

Over the years these river patterns have been made famous by people such as the late Haraldur Diego, better known as Volcano Pilot. He took many people on flights allowing them to capture these stunning patterns. The very first photographs I took of them were on a flight with him 5 years ago. I recently decided to revisit some of these areas with my drone.

I drove with my car as close as I could to the bank of Þjórsá, the longest river in Iceland, and started flying my drone. I remembered well what the area looked like from previous flights and also researched the various satellite imagery that is available. I find that for this purpose Apple Maps has the better quality satellite photographs in comparison to Google Maps. It’s important to research and plan ahead well because this area is enormous and you want to get the most out of your drone batteries. Thanks to my planning, I had a pretty good idea of where to go.

I used four of my DJI Mavic Air 2S’s batteries. Roughly half of the capacity on each flight was used on flying back and forth. If you plan to take photographs here, I recommend to focus on one area at a time to get the most out of it.

Below are some of the photographs that came out of this session. I really enjoy the swirly patterns and colours of this place.

If you want to know where this location is, please have a look at my locations e-book.