Photographer Reuben Wu continues his stunning “Lux Noctis” series with a new collection of images capturing illuminated drone paths over Bolivia’s eerie salt flat landscape. This time, he got to use some cool new equipment: Phase One’s 150-megapixel XT camera system, which costs $57,000.

Phase One sponsored the project, sending Wu to the extraordinary landscape for a set of photos that look more alien than ever.

“My favorite memory from the trip to Bolivia is shooting the salt flats at sunset. The salt crystallizes into beautiful polygon shapes stretching into the horizon and, as the sun was setting, the shadows cast by the glowing salt ridges became longer and longer, and so the landscape would look different every few seconds. Being there and watching the landscape change as the sunset moved across it, that feeling just stuck with me.”

“A lot of my photos created with drone lights feature circles. To me, this shape represents renewal and perfection. With the image above, I wanted to feature the circle within the landscape of Bolivia’s salt flats. Having the light really low on the salt flats created an interesting mood, with the glow emanating from it and the shadows cast on the ground.”

Another series, Aeroglyphs, takes a more geometric approach with large shapes traced in the sky, contrasting with ethereal settings.

Previously, we covered the UFO-style patterns in the skies Wu created for LUX NOCTIS II. The photographer (who’s also a founding member of the band Ladytron) has traveled the world seeking out the most dramatic, high impact landscapes he could find and flying LED-equipped drones overhead to illuminate them after dark.

“It’s so easy to become numb to conventional depictions of beautiful nature,” he said at the time. “In casting a new, unfamiliar light, I want people to see that while other planets are fascinating and incredible to us through the eyes of spacecraft and rovers, it is our own planet which has so much grandeur and beauty which is both accessible to us and worthy of preservation and protection.”

You can read more about Wu’s work in Bolivia at the Phase One website.

Take some of the most alien landscapes on our planet, illuminate them in unnatural ways with the help of drones and the resulting images look like they can’t possibly be real. You can gaze at photo after photo in Rueben Wu’s ‘Lux Noctis’ series with a skeptical eye, certain that there’s digital trickery involved, but the the fact is, the ability to fly bright lights over darkened scenes allows us to see them in a whole new way.

Some of the mountains have halos; others seem like they’re lit on a soundstage for a motion theater production. The angles of the light, with no source apparent in the images, almost lend the photographs a miniaturizing tilt-shift effect. Wu takes inspiration from “ideas of planetary exploration, 19th century sublime romantic painting, and science fiction” for the series of award-winning landscapes.

Wu uses a light by Fiilex mounted on a GPS-equipped 3DR Solo UAV to achieve these effects. You can follow him on Instagram @itsreuben to catch fresh works as they roll in.

“In my visual work, I am driven not just by the urge to create imagery, but by a desire to explore new places as if they were unknown territory, constantly open to serendipity and with an eye for the unnoticed and the hidden,” reads Wu’s website. “Photographs, like music, can create an echo of a time and a place. To me, my images are more than pictures. They are fragments of memory and imagination.”

Perhaps nowhere on Earth is there a more beautiful place to take in crystal-clear views of the starlit sky than the pristine Salar de Uyuni in southwest Bolivia, which boasts a mirror-like reflective surface in some spots. The largest salt flat in the world provides an incredible setting for photographer Daniel Kordan, who traveled there in search of the darkest possible sky. Avoiding light pollution can be tough even in rural areas, but not only is this mineral-coated landscape sufficiently far from urban areas, it’s also sort of alien-like in its own right.

In an interview with My Modern Met, Kordan says the salt flats were so dark, he couldn’t see anything at all until his eyes adjusted. Then, suddenly, the stars were underneath him as well as above. “It seemed that we floated in open space. Our spaceship is parked in a distance, and stars are blinking with blue, red and yellow colors.”

A graduate of the Institute of Physics and Technology in Moscow, Kordan travels the world in search of the most photogenic landscapes, and judging by his portfolio as well as his increasingly popular Instagram, he’s had no trouble finding and capturing them. In addition the salt flats, the photographer has taken gorgeous photos of natural settings i Greece, New Zealand, Greenland, Tuscany, Scotland, Patagonia and many other locales. Check out his personal favorite collection of images he’s taken, replete with glaciers, ice caves, dramatic sand dunes and the aurora borealis.

“I have been fascinated by the possibilities of photography since my early childhood,” says Kordon on his website. “I grew up at beautiful lake region under Moscow exploring wild nature, spending most of my free time in nature. I graduated the art painting school when I was a kid. Mix art, nature, constant activities and you’ll receive a summary – art of Landscape photography. Life started swirling me, pushing me into the rush. University, hard work on my quantum physics thesis, family and friends… but there is alway sa pleasure in the pathless woods: places I always returned and always admired. Nature is my inspiration, with all the beauty and variety of colors and compositions.”

The laws of physics no longer apply as landscapes bend and flip, air and water blend together so that porpoises swim through the sky, surfers catch waves of clouds and the moon grows to many times its normal size. Jakarta-based graphic designer Jati Putra digitally blends photographs of nature, architecture and human subjects to create otherworldly scenes.

These creative compositions masterfully combine images that don’t really go together in the real world, but match up beautifully in mood, tone and color so the results are surreal, yet somehow almost believable. It makes it easy to imagine a world in which you can walk up to the edge of a cliff and see the moon floating in the clouds just off in the distance.

Other manipulations create Inception-like landscapes that fold upon themselves in strange ways, the shape of the Earth and gravity temporarily suspended. But some are so subtle it takes a moment to realize that the trees in a forest are mirrored, with roots and another soil surface where the leaves and sky should be.

Check out more of Putra’s work at his Instagram, @jatiputra.

Gazing at the portfolio of artist Matthew Albanese, you’re likely to marvel not just at his guts for getting so dangerously close to a tornado or erupting volcano, but luck for always seeming to be in the right place at the right time. But Albanese isn’t a storm chaser – the truth is even more interesting and impressive than that. These incredible landscapes are actually miniatures made from everyday materials.

Steel wool stands in for ominous clouds, salt for a waterfall blurred by motion, cotton for smoke and phosphorous ink for lava. Albanese even grew sugar crystals for a month to create the vaguely otherwordly look of an arctic landscape.

It all started when Albanese accidentally spilled a tub of paprika and began seeing the colors and textures of a landscape in the grains. That discovery led to “Paprika Mars”, which required 12 pounds of paprika, cinnamon, nutmeg, chili powder and charcoal to create.

For the photograph to look convincing, Albanese must use a mix of scale, depth of field, lighting and white balance techniques. It takes hours to set up the backdrops and determine the exact angle from which to take the photo.

“My work involves the construction of small-scale meticulously detailed models using various materials and objects to create emotive landscapes,” Albanese writes on his website. “Every aspect from the construction to the lighting of the final model is painstakingly pre-planned using methods which force the viewers perspective when photographed from a specific angle.”