Behind The shot With Rakesh Subramanian

One photographer. One image. The story behind the shot.

I first read about the Bolivian salt flats in a book. I don't remember which one. I remember the feeling.

That was many years ago. It took until my wife's fortieth birthday to finally make it real.

We started in San Pedro de Atacama in Chile, beautiful, warm, familiar in the way tourist towns eventually feel. Then we crossed into Bolivia and everything changed. The Eduardo Avaroa National Preserve doesn't ease you in. It just opens up, lagoons at altitude, flamingos that look placed by someone with a strong sense of composition, volcanic silence in every direction. A paradise for minimalist landscapes and distorted perspectives, and for quietly dismantling whatever emotional walls you'd carried in with you.

I injured my lower back the day we crossed the border. Three days of rough travel to reach Uyuni didn't help. At nearly 16,000 feet on our first day in Bolivia, the altitude was doing its own work on top of everything else.

None of it mattered. Every time we stopped, I walked out into it. Both cameras with me, every time.

Standing on the salt flats, surrounded by hexagonal patterns stretching to the horizon, I understood why I'd held onto that feeling from the book for so long. Some places look exactly the way you imagined them. This one was better.

My only regret, I never got to photograph the night sky from there. That one stays with me.

I'd do every painful kilometer of it again.

You can follow Rakesh’s work on his website www.pixpectivefotography.com