Photo credit: Reuben Wu
Chicago-based photographer Reuben Wu uses drones equipped with LEDs to illuminate shots for his Lux Noctis series. The latest location was Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, also known as the world’s largest salt flat. To capture these stunning images, he used a $57K Phase One XT camera capable of capturing 150-megapixel photographs. His favorite memory from his Bolivian adventure was shooting the salt flats at sunset because of the way the light hit the polygon-like shapes on the ground and.
The world’s largest salt flat is located in the Daniel Campos Province of southwest Bolivia, near the crest of the Andes. It lies 11,995-feet above sea level and formed due to transformations between several prehistoric lakes. Its covered by a few meters of salt crust, which covers a pool of brine that is extremely rich in lithium. Believe it or not, it contains between 50%-70% of the world’s known lithium reserves. The large area combined with the clear skies and extreme flatness of the surface make it ideal for calibrating the altimeters of Earth observation satellites.
