When I think of Utah I think of Salt Lake City. And when I think of Salt Lake City my thought process goes something like this: Salt Lake City >> Bonneville Salt Flats >> Speed Week >> Land Speed Records >> World’s Fastest Indian and so on…
View Driving directions to I-80 W in a larger map
I managed to convince Renee that the Bonneville Salt Flats would be an amazing experience, so after relaxing at Antelope Island for a day we drove the 150mi to Bonneville Salt Flats. On Google there is a Bonneville Salt Flats state park depicted by a green section on the map with a tree icon. In reality the ‘Bonneville Salt Flats’ is a desert, a flat ancient lake bed of cracked salt stretching as far as the eye can see; there is no campsite just a truck stop on the side of the major highway 80. Don’t expect a tourist information centre or a nice boardwalk across the best salt flat section; there is none of this. Unfortunately we were not there during speed week either, if you want to catch racing you should go between August and October.
Major events for 2012:
Speed Week (Aug 11-17 2012) & World Finals (Oct 03-06 2012)
Bonneville Salt Flats Official Sign
Bonneville Salt Flats Landscape
Low Angle of Renee and the Salt Flats
Fortunately we soon discovered how to have fun and capture some Must Take Photos at Bonneville Salt Flats
Must Take Photos – Play with Perception
With the two of us, a tripod and my camera on self timer we managed to snap some pretty cool photos.
Holding Renee, Wondering How She Got So Small
We developed the technique where the ‘little person’ lined up the shot by adjusting the camera position and giving instructions to the ‘large person’. Once lined up the ‘little person’ pressed the shutter button and ran to the spot where they were supposed to be standing before the self timer took the photo. Of course if you had three people this would all be a lot easier.
Playing wih Perception on Bonneville Salt Flats
These shots look cool because the terrain is so similar that it is hard to perceive depth. However because the salt floor was so consistent it was hard as the ‘little person’ to remember where you were supposed to be standing in the photo when you lined up the shot. Essentially we had to line up the shot around an imperfection on the ground which we could remember and then go and stand on before the self timer took the photo.
Sometimes we got it wrong.
Perspective Failure One
Perspective Failure Two
Perspective Failure Three (Where are my feet?)
Perspective Failure Four - Renee is a little too big to eat
But we also captured photos we were pretty happy with. Hope you like them.
Perplexed Looking at Each Other
Ahhhh, Don't Drop Me!
Almost Falling off Renee's Hand
It was fun to be able to take photos which I’d normally associate with Photoshop tinkering without any Photoshop at all. Note that we did edit the photos where the ‘little person’ was on the left hand side to remove the ‘little person’s’ shadow. When the ‘little person’ was on the right hand side their shadow was naturally hidden by the ‘big person’.
Just Need to Remove My Shadow
Shadow Removed, I am Now Standing on Renee's Head
If you go Bonneville Salt Flats, you must take some perception deceiving photos!
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Nice photos!
awesome pics mate, there’s a place in Bolivia similar to this too i think – really cool! 🙂
Yes, Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia. You see some pretty amazing photos if you do an image search.
Haha, nice shots! I visited the salt flats in Jujuy in northern Argentina, and my friend and I got our tour guide to snap a few ‘little people’ shots of us.
Cool, I knew there were some similar places in South America and now I know you can see them in northern Argentina (thanks @thatbackpacker) and Bolivia (thanks @onestep4ward)
The best shots I’ve seen this week. Loving these kind of pics 🙂
Nice photos! Salt flats are great for taking funny photos. I went to the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia six months ago. It was amazing, but damn you can’t take off your sunglasses there, or your eyes will hurt!
LOVE the pictures! We tried to take similar ones at the Salar de Uyuni salt flats but they aren’t nearly as cool. Well done!
Thank you.
I’m going to have to try get to Salar de Uyuni one day
From one Sam to another these are some awesome pics! It reminds me of my time spent at the Uyuni Salt Flats in Bolivia.
Always nice to interact with another Sam!
It seems more people have visited the Bolivia salt flats than the Bonneville ones; I find that surprising but perhaps I shouldn’t.
I’ve always heard about another Salt Flats in Utah. Now I finally see it! It looks almost exactly like Bolivia! I’m guessing you took hundreds of photos just to get a few good ones?
Since we were using a tripod to self take the photos each one took quite a while. There were only a couple more that aren’t shown on this post, and some of the bad ones are shown as examples.
I really love the photos!
Thank you Riz, they’re certainly some of my favourite photos & we had a lot of fun taking them
I love it! I did this awhile back while we were in Brisbane. Not quite as good as your shots though.
http://moneyfortravel.net/brisbane-mirror-ball