This is a photo I took of a real place that many people did not believe was real... And that's exactly how I found it.
I was on a road-trip through the American Southwest with some friends when we put on a podcast that was talking about "15 Places On Earth That Don't Look Real." Most of them were in faraway countries and we were getting giddy as we wrote the locations down and started to daydream about international trips. During our excitement we heard the podcaster say, "The Great Salt Lake in Utah." We all looked at each other, quickly checked Maps, and realized we were only a two hour drive away.
The podcaster started going on about how the lake is split by a railway and on each side the water is a different colour. On one side the lake is a vibrant blue caused by cyanobacteria while the other side turns a pinkish red from an algae called Dunaliella Salina. However, the podcaster stated very clearly that this only happens at certain times of the year based on the air temperature and the salinity levels, but never mentioned the time of year.
After a quick Google search I found that this is a completely random event and I would just have to go to the actual location myself to see if the colours of the water were pink and blue.
So, I mapped my friends and I directly to The Great Salt Lake. We arrived at night, set our alarms for sunrise, and went to sleep in our campervan. Before I could even snooze my alarm, I was already scrambling out of bed at sunrise with excitement. I grabbed my drone, ran out of the van, climbed up a hill to see the lake, and with disappointment I saw that the colours were not nearly as dramatic as I was lead to believe.
I sat down on the hill, put my drone next to me, and thought to myself "Oh well, at least I get to watch the sunrise." After sunrise my friends and I grabbed our camera gear and prepared to leave, but something told me I needed to take one last look at the lake. So I turned around and looked again and that's when I saw the colours. A deep blue on one side and an extraordinary pink on the other. The soft morning light shining through the water caused the colours to pop with a vibrancy that wasn't apparent at dawn. If I had left a few minutes earlier I never would have seen the sun lighting up the water and causing this phenomenal event.
I flew my drone up over the lake, composed my image, and captured a photo that simply does not look real... But is.
