SOLITARY HIERARCHY # 1

I was invited to visit a friend’s farm in Namibia to celebrate New Year. It is an enormous piece of land, 150,000 hectares which bordered on South Africa . Although it was only 3 o’clock while driving out on a rocky mountain pass one afternoon, the sky had started to turn orange in colour.

Looking closer I realized that it was dust in the air and that an enormous storm was going to overrun me soon. I managed to capture a couple of images of the rolling dust that was driven ahead of the rain. As soon as the dust curled down over the mountain the wind started to blow violently. In case of hail, I managed to park my vehicle in a way that would cause least damage. Now for the waiting! The first big brown drops started to thud down onto my car and moments later my world was filled with thunder, lightning, wind and buckets of water. Fortunately the storm did not last too long but it was scary enough. It was still raining quite heavily when I spotted this beautiful picture close to the car. I opened the downwind window of the car, to keep my camera from getting wet and wedged my tripod in-between the front seats. The dust had moved on and the sun was trying to break through creating beautiful soft light. No filter was necessary for this shot. A little later the orange color disappeared and made way for a dark dull grey sky. The shot was gone.

With my emotions full of the happening I returned to the farmhouse many kilometers away only to find that the dry riverbeds had become raging torrents. After forging my way through deep water, I reached the house late that night. An experience that I will not easily forget!