My reward for traversing several hours of barren desert in Iceland's central highlands was an oasis called Hveravellir, a steaming, bubbling, otherworldly landscape filled with geothermal oddities. I arrived in the dark, but by 3:00 a.m. the rising summer sun revealed an array of colorful features, the centerpiece of which was this pool of intensely blue water cupped in white silica. Beneath dark clouds and in a light rain, a four second tripod-mounted exposure through a standard polarizer rendered the surface of the steaming pool smooth and transparent, allowing the natural coloration of its mineral-laden liquid to shine through.