In April 2021, Taiwan experienced its worst drought in six decades, leading to region-wide water rationing. In spite of these conditions, an abandoned salt field in southern Taiwan turned into a striking natural spectacle.

Inspired by this ephemeral phenomenon—which lasted only about a month—I led a professional aerial photography team to capture its rare beauty. We used a 50-megapixel camera equipped with a telephoto lens, positioning it 90 meters above the ground to “scan” the landscape from above. After four months of intensive post-production and an initial stitching of 430 files, we produced a 5.6-billion-pixel image—an enormous 90.52 GB file. From this colossal master file, we then cropped 140 pieces of varying sizes and aspect ratios, a process that ultimately spanned nearly two years.