sand and water
After South Africa, our next destination in Southern Africa was Namibia – a parched country on the Western coast of Africa. We had an amazing time in Namibia and I would unhesitatingly return in a heartbeat. We found the people to be friendly and the country easy to travel in but the reason we traveled there was because of the desert.
The desert in Namibia is a sight to be seen and the apex of that experience is the Sossusvlei pan in the Namib-Naukluft National Park. Here the Orange dunes lurch out from the desert floor.
We arrived before sunrise – as the general custom is to enter the park and watch the sun rise above the dunes. We raced through the park as the sun came up over the horizon stopping along the way to photograph the scenery. Some of the dunes attract hikers looking to summit just as the sun comes over the surrounding dunes and mountains.
This photograph captures one of those climbers on his way up (a little late for the rising sun).
Even within a short time of entering the park, I was taken with the scale of the surrounds. I wanted to capture the diminutive size of the person compared to the scenery. There are a few aspects of this photo that I think help capture that feeling. First, I wanted the tree to draw in the eye as the immediate subject. This immediately puts the figure as a lesser character. Second, framing the image with the dune taking up the majority of photo and the person squeezed into the top of the frame helps convey the overwhelming feeling of the space. Finally, the lighting, with the distant dunes (just visible behind the person) a darker shade helps establish depth, and the sense that the dune being climbed is not among the larger dunes in the park.
Overall, I was pretty happy with the photos I took in Sossusvlei even though I wasn’t thrilled with the overcast lighting that day.
After our desert adventure, our next African stop was Victoria Falls and it couldn’t have been more of a contrast. We were there during the height of the Zambezi river flow and after spending more than a week in the desert it was quite a thing to see so much water.
This photograph was taken as the sun was lowering in the sky (in fact, we were among the last visitors to the falls that evening exiting just after the sun dipped below the horizon). I like the way the light – though not obviously coming from the side at first, highlights the water to give it a sense of depth. The mist from the falls was quite amazing as evidinced in other photos from that day but in this image, it didn’t effect the contrast too much.
I took several photos, but I liked the closeups the most, even though they might not convey the full breadth of the falls. These closeups are not as successful as others I’ve taken at Yoesmite, but that’s a post for another day.
