These stunning pictures remind me of satellite photos of the Earth’s surface taken from hundreds to thousands of kilometers high up. Some of these even bear striking resemblance to colored photos of the Martian landscape. But these photos were taken closer to home. From an open window of a light aircraft flying at a height of 800 meters, Russian photographer Andre Ermolaev took these jaw-dropping images of the meandering rivers of Iceland with a Hasselblad H4D-40.

Says the photographer: "Iceland is a wonderful country; I would even say that it is a true paradise for all the photo shooting-lovers. But what has become a real discovery for me is the bird’s eye view of the rivers flowing along the black volcanic sand. It is an inexpressible combination of colors, lines, and patterns. The photo represents the mouth of the river falling into the ocean.”

"A little bit upstream there is a yellow-colored brook flowing into the river, but yellow currents fail to mix with the main water flow. One can estimate the scale judging by the car tracks that are clearly seen on the black sand. This is just a river, just a volcano, just our planet."

Sources: MyModernMetropolis and Johanan Rakkav