The Sheltering Desert
From Ansel Adams and Eliot Porter to David Muench, many photographers have been attracted by the desert landscape.
The main reasons that I love the desert are its simplicity, quality of light due to low humidity in the air, and the ability to get away from the masses; if only you hike a mile. The absence of vegetation reveals the underlying geological structures; the bare bones of Earth laid out in front of us.
On a recent trip, we almost got trapped because of Covid-19 travel restrictions. For a second, I considered renting a campervan (aka RV) and hiding in The Sheltering Dessert. This is the title of a book by Henno Martin (1910-1998), a German professor of geology who, along with Hermann Korn and their dog named Otto, lived for two years in the Namib desert.