There’s light. And then there’s Bolivian light.

Photographing the salt flats of Bolivia — Salar de Uyuni — was one of the most disorienting and visually surreal experiences I’ve had behind a camera. It’s like being dropped into another planet. A place so minimal, so overwhelmingly vast, that the usual rules of light and shadow feel like they don’t apply anymore.

And that’s exactly what made it so hard to photograph.

From the start, I wasn’t sure how to approach it. The exposure was a nightmare. Midday light bounced harshly off the endless white crust, giving everything a blown-out, high-key look. Shadows vanished. Horizons disappeared. Even my own sense of scale got confused — I wasn’t sure if I was photographing the sky or the ground.

I wrestled with different styles. Do I lean into the washed-out aesthetic, like a Uniqlo ad, minimalist and flat? Or strip it all down into black-and-white, to focus on form and abstraction? Nothing felt quite right. None of them captured what it felt like to stand there — in that place where the earth and sky mirrored one another so perfectly that you didn’t know where you were anymore.

Eventually, I decided to embrace the surreal. I went for intensity — contrast, clarity, boldness. I wanted the clouds to feel monumental, the reflection to feel supernatural, and the salt crust to remind you that this was still earth, but barely. Not soft. Not dreamy. But bold, alien, and unforgettable.

This frame was taken mid-afternoon, just after a short burst of high-altitude rain fell in the distance. The salt pan had a thin film of water, turning the entire landscape into a mirror. Shot on the GFX 50S II, using the GF 35-70mm lens, I exposed for the clouds, letting the whites in the foreground carry texture without clipping. This one was f/8, 1/140 sec, ISO 200 — I needed to freeze the faint rain trails falling from the clouds without losing their delicate gradients.

Looking at it now, I’m glad I didn’t play it safe. Salar de Uyuni is not a place for modest photos. It’s a place that demands awe. A place that makes you feel small in the best way. And if I came even a little close to capturing that feeling — then it was worth every second spent second-guessing myself.