Here a few photos taken in Sossusvlei in Namibia, home of the highest sand dunes in the world. I have taken these photo about a year ago, and just updated a few of them on my pbase gallery.

All these photos have been taken with a *istD and DA16-45 (except one photo taken with FA80-320).




(taken with FA 80-320)





More under Namibia 2005 Photo Gallery by Dominique Schreckling at pbase.com

Comments and critiques are welcome

[roentarre]

Here a few photos taken in Sossusvlei in Namibia, home of the highest sand dunes in the world. I have taken these photo about a year ago, and just updated a few of them on my pbase gallery.

Comments and critiques are welcome

In general, they are of good quality shots. The sun was definitely harsh shown through your images. I particularly love the last photograph the best.

The last photograph has a great foreground tree that has an interesting shape, with the distant trees bringing out the expanse of the desert. The colour and texture variation of the sands gives depth to the image. This is in deed my favorite shot

1st pic - the tree is sort of burnt out because of the highlights with little details and it obscured the sand-dune to a degree. The sand dune does not look grandeous. Though a good photograph, I would prefer the last pic over this

2nd pic - It would be a better image of the road beneath the sand dune could extend beyond right side of the photo frame, extending outside the image with the initial composition. Maybe you cropped something on the right side of the image or you did not include that part to start with. The meandering road from the sand dune all the way to the bottom edge of the photo would bring out both distance and size of sand dune better.

3rd pic - it is similar to 4th but the foreground tree branch is kind of obscuring the background sandune and distracting to a degree. If you had not posted the 4th pic, I would go for this shot the best

Hope you do not mind my ranting here. They are great images! I had never travelled to that part of the world - a lovely photographing heaven for sure

Regards

[clarenceclose]

Image #2 made me grunt with appreciation, especially your capture of the scale and the contrast, side to side, of the dune. I like the way the road takes me to the base and my eye travels to the top of the dune, both in sweeping curves. Textural transitions work well too rough to silky sky with grainy dune between.
Not that the rest of your photos are lacking, just that one gave me a gut reaction.

[joele]

Love the scenery, composition and colours...

#3 grabs me, reminds me of a scene from "the Cell" ;-)

The road running up to the dune in #2 looks great too..

[tcom]

Thank you for all your comments.

The light conditions on these photos were really extreme. It was close to midday as we arrived to these dunes. We left the hotel very early in the morning (5AM) to get the best possible light in the dunes (the gates at the parc open at sunrise and then you have normally a one hour drive to these places).

Unfortunately the raining season already started and a nearby thunderstorm during the night made some changes in our program:



This river needs to be crossed, and is normally completely dry. But on that day, the first time since 12 years, the river was not crossable for normal vehicles. We waited 3 hours for the water level to lower, and the best light was long gone as we arrived at the dunes.

I tried to make the best out of the situation, but light was really harsh (and more than 45C by that time of the day).