PhotoShare: Sunrise over Goera Pan

Another insane week on my end has kept me from writing another lengthy blog post...so you will have to be content with another quick PhotoShare. Hopefully I can muster up a properly pithy blog post sometime over the weekend.


This was taken while I was participating in the Spirit of Africa challenge, I was able to do some much-needed Kalahari landscape shooting. Being able to walk around and play with different compositions is a breath of fresh air as far as landscapes in this area goes, as I'm usually bound to my vehicle in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park looking for dangerous predators when I find myself in this area.


The event was held on a local farm, and much of it took place on the "Goera Pan", a large salt pan on the farm which can be seen from the main road between Upington and Askham.


This was taken from a small dune in the middle of the pan, and is a blend of 3 exposures to get the dynamic range of the scene right. I used a fourth exposure with my thumb obscuring the sun to remove distracting lens flare from the shot (more about this technique can be found on the site of Hougaard Malan, an inspiring young South African professional landscape photographer whose work belies his age - he has a few great tutorials on his site).


I set the aperture to f22 in order to get as much of the scene in focus as possible and also to obtain that nice solar star. I also used a circular polariser to obtain the deep blue tone in the sky and eliminate any unwanted reflections of light.


Here is the final image...

f16  //  Bracketed Exposures  //  ISO-100  //  Circular Polariser

Hope you liked it...and remember to keep shooting!


Morkel Erasmus