Namibia trip report (Part 5 - Namib Rand and Wolwedans)
Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 10:00AM This is the 5th trip report from my latest safari to Namibia You can read my Namibia trip report (Part 1 - Skeleton Coast) entry, Namibia trip report (Part 2 - Serra Cafema) entry, my Namibia trip report (Part 3 - Namib-Naukluft) and finally my Namibia trip report (Part 4 - Lüderitz and theSperrgebiet) if you have not already done so.
After two successive mornings of shoots at Kolmanskop, it was time to fly over to the NamibRand reserve, one of the most beautiful locations in Namibia. The NamibRand reserve has some excellent wildlife, albeit sparse. This is one of the areas where you one can take wildlife-scapes of gemsbok (oryx) amongst green and yellow grass and also small red sand dunes. We spent two nights at the luxurious Woldedans Dunes Lodge, and it was a great opportunity to spend some time photographing landscapes, as well as some wildlife. On our only full day in the area, we had overcast skies for almost the entire day. This made landscape shooting a challenge, however soft light is actually a positive as long as you don't include the sky in your photographs.
From an equipment standpoint, the area lends iteself to longer lenses for both the wildlife and the landscapes. The Sony 70-400mm lens was on my camera most of the time, and the images that I captured need a fair amount of processing for me to be happy with them. Given my schedule as of late, I suspect this will get punted into August or September before I have the time to work on them. Kind of sucks, but I am working hard on Gura Gear business, running a safari in Botswana and doing color consulting work for Moab by Legion Paper.
Wolwedans Dunes Lodge, amongst the red sand dunes
The Mars-like landscape of the NamibRand. We had an amazing show of light and clouds on our first evening.
The dining area at Wolwedans Dunes Lodge.
Cheese.
Reader Comments (5)
Did I ever mention that I loved Wolwedans Dunes Lodge ?
Many thanks for your trip report, Andy, as I will be travelling to Namibia with Wilderness within 2 weeks time it will definitly help me a lot.
As I will use the same camera and lenses (I will just bring my 2.8/300 as we will go to Etosha), could you please clarify the processing issues your will need for the Wolvedans shoots you made ?
Gilles, I am torn between B&W and color for the wildlife images, and I just need some time to see what I can make out of them. Most of them are gemsbok images amongst the dunes, and the most beautiful oryx of the bunch had a broken horn, which would be nice to kind of make it look nice again. :-)
Great, thanks, I was scared about some potential issue you had for wildlife shoots taken with the 70-400, which is my wife's lense ;)
Hey! I remember those 3 from my Tanzania trip! I hope there were enough birds in Namibia for them to photograph...