20 November 2012 / leggypeggy

It’s all in how you look at it on the salt flat of Bolivia

Hippy, Oasis Overland, Salar de Uyuni, salt flats

Hippy gives us all a ride

From the first mention of going to Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni (salt flat), the young ones in our group began planning the props and shenanigans they’d get up to on the vast expanse of flat whiteness.

Why all the fuss? What’s the big deal?

I’d heard of the Bolivian salt flat, but I had not realised that in addition to its remarkable and expansive landscape, it was the perfect place to lose your perspective on how the world looks from different angles.

Here’s your chance to jump out of a Christmas parcel, be poured out of a wine bottle or pop out of a Pringle’s can. You can fight a dragon and win, or dive into a leather hat. We spent hours on the flat, taking shots with clever positioning and an array of props borrowed from the truck and our hostel.

Getting ready for a photo shoot (result below)

Friends hold friends hold friends

The trick is to have one person or some item positioned close to the camera, while the ‘small’ people stand farther—sometimes much farther—back. The person operating the camera needs to play around quite a bit so everything lines up properly.

In our case, we had almost two dozen directors—shouting out move left, move back, move over, duck down, lean forward and many more instructions several hundred times.

Colin and Sammy, our driver and tour leader, were the chief consultants and photographers as they have stopped at the flat many times in the past. Although everyone got in the act, and it’s hard to say who took which pictures here, so many thanks to all who contributed.

I’ve shared a few of our most impressive photographic efforts here. You can also see some of the fun when the girls were being frisky on the salt flat or when Hippy shared some of his holiday adventures.

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