The changed course of a river has delivered Dead Vlei wholesale to the surrounding desert. The area is popular and much photographed. Even a wedding party arrived to pose for their photographer while I was there.
But the real magic happens in this area of dead, skeletal acacia trees—some more than half a millennium old—a little after sunrise, too early for most visitors. There cannot be a tree in this area that has not been photographed, either singly or as part of a group, so I knew it would be optimistic to anticipate coming away with a wholly original shot. But there are degrees in such matters, and I was pleased that the light and the blown sand it illuminated provided something approaching a bespoke background to these magnificent trees: dead, certainly, but undiminished.
