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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”.

This post’s featured image was taken from the bed of the Hoarusib River; the lens’ focal length was 62 mm, so the field of view and “scale” are not very different from how a naked-eyed human would see/sense them.

For the next post’s image, my feet were in almost exactly the same position, but the lens deployed was more than six times longer….

Published in Americas and Eurasia and Africa nature and travel photographs