Reader Benjamin Taylor sent me many photos from Africa, which I intend to post in dollops. Today we have landscapes, and the next installment will be animals. Taylor’s notes are indented:
Last month I went on a camping trip around southern Africa (Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Zambia) and took quite a few photographs.
The Milky Way:
Sunrise from Dune 45 (Namib-Naukluft National Park, Namibia):
Looking down from the top of Dune 45:
Deadvlei, Namib-Naukluft National Park, Namibia.
A clay pan surrounded by sand dunes. This used to be a desert oasis, but the shifting dunes cut off the water supply leaving the white clay and dead acacia trees behind. The dead trees have stood, largely unchanged, for around 600-700 years due to the extremely arid climate. The name ‘Deadvlei’ translates to ‘the dead marsh’.
Awesome pics of an awesome place. Africa, in general, is worth at least a month or two of every westerner’s time. Rightfully a lot more, but at least that.
Agreed. If you can afford a trip there, I heartily recommend it.
Absolutely lovely. I see a moving object (a streak) in the lower part of the milky way galaxy picture. Given its a timed exposure I suspect its a satellite
Yep – satellite is my guess as well. There’s quite a few in there, although most are very faint.
When I first look at these photos, I thought that they were something like a micrometeor that had left a very short trail before burning up. However, looking at several exposures you can see the trail moves across the sky in each one, so it has to be something moving quite slowly, like a satellite.
I took some other photos of the Milky Way whilst I was there – this one has a shorter exposure time, so you get a sharper image with less trailing on the stars. I also stacked multiple exposures to reduce the high ISO noise:
https://i.imgur.com/Pao4Zjn.jpg
and the same photo with some objects (maybe incorrectly!) identified:
https://i.imgur.com/6enOb0B.jpg
Opps. Sorry about the images embedded in the comments. I didn’t think that happened with direct links.
That’s okay. I don’t frown on ALL images being embedded, and this is useful.
Absolutely beautiful. The night sky is one thing we did not get pictures of on our trip. Thank you for sharing.
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Absolutely incredibly gorgeous photos. Even without the Milky Way, the pix of the landscapes are awe-inspiring. (I do not use the other “awe” word.) And I thought East Africa was beautiful! Thanks.
Thank you very much.
I’d love to try and get to East Africa – particularly Tanzania to see the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro crater.
Just where my wife and I were. Magnificent also. Try to get there before they build a highway across it…
“Try to get there before they build a highway across it…”
Ugh…will nothing stand in the way of “progress”?
Humans really need to get over the idea that we are entitled to every square inch of the planet, and that we can simply ride roughshod over any ecosystems or species that get in our way.
Great trip. I’d love to do Namibia and the rest. I spent time in SA, but need to get out more.
Nice shots all around.
Namibia really looks like a “target rich environment” for a photographer!
These are superb!
Do I see Dr. Cobb’s departed Woody Woodpecker in amongst the clouds in photos 3 and 4?
Gorgeous, especially the Milky Way! How did you get that shot (equipment, stacking etc)?
Hi Diana – I somehow missed the ‘reply’ link, so you can find the details of the shots in the comment below!
Thank you : )
The photo at the top of the post was exposed for 30 seconds at f/3.5, ISO 6400, and 18 mm.
The photo of the Milky Way linked in the comments (the one with the labels) was exposed for 15 seconds (to keep star trails to a minimum) at f/3.5, ISO 6400, and 18 mm. For this photo I took a series of exposures (eight, I think?) and median-stacked them to reduce the high ISO noise.
Both were taken with a Nikon D7100 and a Nikon DX 18-200 mm f/3.5-5 lens on a run-of-the-mill tripod.
This was my very first attempt at night sky photography (where I live there’s far too much light pollution to even consider taking a photo of the night sky), and I think they came out pretty well considering I’ve had no practise! Although, a lot of the credit goes to Namibia’s exquisitely dark and clear skies.
Wow for a first attempt that is amazing! My first attempts are basically the moon and a really blurry shot of the Orion Nebula because I didn’t have the kind of tracker on my telescope that could handle the extra load of my camera.
For some reason those desert photos reminded me of Paul Bowles’ novel The Sheltering Sky. Though set in northern Africa, it describes the feelings of starkness, nakedness and existential threat these photos evoke: eerie and beautiful.
That reminds me of another Paul…Paul Shepard, who wrote the following in ‘Man in the Landscape: A Historic View of the Esthetics of Nature’:
“The desert is the environment of revelation, genetically and physiologically alien, seriously austere, esthetically abstract, historically inimical…its forms are bold and suggestive. The mind is beset by light and space, the kinesthetic novelty of aridity, high temperature and wind. The desert sky is encircling, majestic, terrible. In other habitats, the rim of sky above the horizontal is broken or obscured; here together with the overhead portion, it is infinitely vaster than that of rolling countryside and forest lands. In an unobstructed sky the clouds seems more massive, sometimes grandly reflecting the earth’s curvature on their concave undersides. The angularity of desert landforms imparts a monumental architecture to the clouds as well as to the land…
To the deserts go prophets and hermits; through deserts go pilgrims and exiles. Here the leaders of the great religions have sought the therapeutic and spiritual values of retreat, not to escape but to find reality”
The prose is a bit over the top for my taste, but it definitely captures some of the striking grandeur of the desert.
Yes, grandiose prose indeed, but I’ve never been to a ‘real’ desert and because of that, the description is evocative. Thanks.
A, “hellish” landscape, but beautiful nonetheless- wonderful color combinations (blue and orange are, “complementary” colors like red and green, and purple and yellow)!
Amazing pics Benjamin! I’m going to indulge, and I don’t use the word either – awesome!
Hey, cool. I was there earlier in August. Some of my photos are here: http://www.silentnomad.com/images/Photos/Namibia/
Namibia does have some great dark skies, which explains why there are a lot night sky photos! Enjoy.
Thanks for sharing such breathtaking work!
Superb pictures. Thank you!
Africa is amazing, but where to start?