Morkel Erasmus
09-21-2009, 05:52 PM
I just returned from a magical 8-day trip to the Kgalagadi Transfrontier National Park in the Kalahari desert. The park straddles the borders of South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. Some amazing wildlife and avian sightings are to be enjoyed here - but more than that the appeal of this arid region lies in its wide open spaces, immense silence and its red sand dunes popping out of golden fields of wild grass, dotted with the signature camel-thorn trees. It's a place where you can unwind your stress, cleanse your soul and just be.
On this day we had magnificent clouds - I almost took more landscape shots than wildlife/avian :)
The park is concentrated around 2 dry riverbeds - the Nossob and the Auob. You literally drive around in the riverbed on gravel roads. The rivers only flow in the case of extreme heavy rainfall, something that this region has had 3 occurrances of in the last 100 years or so.
I used the gravel road as a leading FG line to balance the strong lines of the clouds. I wanted to give the viewer a sense of the space, as well as the unique biosphere of the golden grass, sparse trees and red sand dunes. I hope I have succeeded. I will be posting many different scenes from this amazing place. And yes - in Africa our skies look like this a lot :D
Your comments will be highly appreciated...
Techs:
Canon 1000D with 18-55mm IS lens
f16 @ 1/250 SS @ ISO-200
Exp 0
Handheld from SUV window
PP applied: reverse S-curve, selective colour, local contrast enhancement, slight saturation (10 points), NR on the sky
On this day we had magnificent clouds - I almost took more landscape shots than wildlife/avian :)
The park is concentrated around 2 dry riverbeds - the Nossob and the Auob. You literally drive around in the riverbed on gravel roads. The rivers only flow in the case of extreme heavy rainfall, something that this region has had 3 occurrances of in the last 100 years or so.
I used the gravel road as a leading FG line to balance the strong lines of the clouds. I wanted to give the viewer a sense of the space, as well as the unique biosphere of the golden grass, sparse trees and red sand dunes. I hope I have succeeded. I will be posting many different scenes from this amazing place. And yes - in Africa our skies look like this a lot :D
Your comments will be highly appreciated...
Techs:
Canon 1000D with 18-55mm IS lens
f16 @ 1/250 SS @ ISO-200
Exp 0
Handheld from SUV window
PP applied: reverse S-curve, selective colour, local contrast enhancement, slight saturation (10 points), NR on the sky