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Category: Americas and Eurasia and Africa

“Landscape” view/much closer view (#1A in series: Sesriem Canyon)

Published April 27, 2024 by Pelidoug

“Landscape” view/much closer view (#1A in series: Sesriem Canyon)

 

 

Whether or not you are taking photographs – and wherever you happen to be – it is always worthwhile, often, to change your field of view from narrow to wide, and to shift your focus from somewhere/something near to somewhere/something distant…and vice-versa.

Doing so will help your eyes to work better, for longer…and you will enjoy many wonderful sights that you would have missed, had your focus and field of view remained “fixed”.

(it is also a good idea – most especially if you enjoy wildlife encounters – to turn around and look behind you, frequently …but “turning around” is not this series’ concern)

The series begins in the Namib, the world’s oldest desert…

read more“Landscape” view/much closer view (#1A in series: Sesriem Canyon)
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Namib Desert’s northwest (#29 in series: riverbed to ridge tops)

Published March 21, 2024 by Pelidoug

Namib Desert’s northwest (#29 in series: riverbed to ridge tops)

 

This is the current series’ final trio of images taken from the bed of the (mostly dry-surfaced, but intermittently greened/vegetated) Hoarusib.

Only on very infrequent occasions is flowing water readily evident; usually, parts of the riverbed double as road.

All three photos were taken within a single “window” of less than two minutes, as I walked a very short distance, and pointed my 400mm lens north/ish.

At this point the Hoarusib’s source is circa 280 kilometres further inland.

The Atlantic’s “skeleton coast” is less than 20 kilometres distant.

Here, I think, is one of “our” planet’s singular places.

Arguably, no other (relatively) accessible location so richly deserves to be described as “pristine wilderness”…

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Namib Desert’s northwest (#25 in series: one dune, three views)

Published March 16, 2024 by Pelidoug

Namib Desert’s northwest (#25 in series: one dune, three views)

 

 

All three images involve the same dune, as viewed from the bed of the Hoarusib – the river the dune was “meeting”, at 9.06/9.07 am on 14 November 2022.

I shot all three within circa 90 seconds, with a 400 mm lens.

You will see more within these images if you enlarge them /zoom in on their details.

read moreNamib Desert’s northwest (#25 in series: one dune, three views)
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Namib Desert’s northwest (#22 in series: sands, plural…rocks, ditto)

Published March 13, 2024 by Pelidoug

Namib Desert’s northwest (#22 in series: sands, plural…rocks, ditto)

 

 

In this part of the Namib – its western edge, adjacent to the Atlantic’s “skeleton coast” – its dunes are often generally-lighter in colour than are those further inland and further south.

Here, also, variations in colour and texture are more readily-evident/common on the dunes’ surfaces.

Their “sands” are not all of the same kind, colour and density; accordingly, winds “sift”, “sort” and shift them, differentially.

The results are oft-exquisite: “sand mandalas”, sans any human role in their creation.

I especially love what happens when shifting sands meet rocks and/or riverbeds; they, too, are far from “uniform”.

read moreNamib Desert’s northwest (#22 in series: sands, plural…rocks, ditto)
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Namib Desert’s northwest (#21 in series: another win for the Springboks)

Published March 12, 2024 by Pelidoug

Namib Desert’s northwest (#21 in series: another win for the Springboks)

 

For Australian followers of Test Matches across two “major” sporting codes, this post’s subtitle will recall at least several decades of all-too-familiar, unwelcome headlines

The actual Springbok – Antidorcas marsupialis –  is South Africa’s heraldic beast.

However, this charismatic antelope is similarly abundant in Namibia and Botswana, and its range extends into the drier, southwest corner of Angola.

(Namibia’s emblematic mammal returns the compliment; gemsbok also thrive in South Africa and Botswana)

read moreNamib Desert’s northwest (#21 in series: another win for the Springboks)
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