Landscape

In Namibia in November 2008 we really wanted to see Dead Vlei at Sossusvlei on our own and with nobody else there to spoil the barrenness. Pictures of Dead Vlei needed to contain no other people, just the sky, sand and acacias.

We arrived early, just after the sunrise, and we were relieved to see that it would just be ourselves – at least for a time anyway.

I used mainly a 12-24 zoom lens, and more often than not at the widest end. This image is a little unusual in that I’d used a 70-200 zoom instead to isolate this section and catch the lines of the dunes. And while the scene looks spectacular in color, I thought I’d try a monochrome variant here.

About an hour or so after we’d arrived, more people had arrived and the riverbed started to fill with people.

Taken using a Nikon D300 with a 70-200 lens at 80mm, f/8, 1/750 and ISO 200.

Dead Vlei is a pan, part of riverbed now isolated by the highest sand dunes in the world, some reaching up to 300 meters which rest on a sandstone terrace. The clay pan was formed after rainfall, when the river flooded, creating temporary pools where the of water allowed acacia trees to grow. When the climate changed and drought hit the area, the sand dunes encroached on the pan, which blocked the river from the area. The remaining skeletons of the trees, which are believed to be about 900 years old, are now black because the intense sun has scorched them. The wood does not decompose because it is so dry.