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A Lake In the Faroe Islands Looks Like Its Hanging Over A Cliff

A Lake In the Faroe Islands Looks Like Its Hanging Over A Cliff

Lake Sørvágsvatn in winter frozen over

As it turns out, the world is rife with instances of optical illusion. Octopuses can vanish, Mother Nature has been caught weeping and Bolivia’s salt flats seems made for photo mischief . Lots of great magical illusions can often be played out just using some smart travel photography – no Photoshop required.

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Take the case of Lake Sørvágsvatn, which you can see from the image above, looks as though it is sitting quite high above the ocean, almost jutting out over the water that laps below.

But when we take a closer look – from a different angle – it’s not as tricky as it seems.

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(Photo: Charlie Kellogg/Flickr)

This hanging lake is actually the largest lake in the Faroe Islands, a collection of small islands north-west of the UK between Iceland and Norway. While this photo makes it look as though the lake is suspended over the edge of the ocean, in actual fact the cliff is about 100 metres from the ocean and the lake sits about 70 metres below it.

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That’s some pretty smart snapping right there. Sørvágsvatn, which spans about six kilometres, spills out into the Atlantic ocean through a waterfall called Bøsdalafossur. During the winter months the water almost completely freezes over leaving a remarkably picturesque spot for some ice fishing.

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(Photo: Hans Juul Hansen/Flickr)

While we would like to believe in real-life magic, we might just have to settle for a little magical photography.

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