Jeremiah Gilbert on “Deadvlei, Namibia” and “Halong Bay”

The two photos included in issue 13 of Split Rock Review where taken at two very different locations, the only commonalities being the photographer and use of a wide-angle lens. “Deadvlei, Namibia” was shot this past December while my wife and I were exploring southern Africa. We began in South Africa, worked our way up Namibia, then across Botswana into Zimbabwe and Zambia. Deadvlei means “dead marsh” and is a white clay pan located near the more famous salt pan of Sossusvlei, inside the Namib-Naukluft Park in Namibia. It requires off-roading and then some hiking to get to. The site creates a stunning visual with the cracked white of the clay pan against the red of the sand dunes and the stark black of the dead trees. The remaining skeletons of the trees, which are believed to have died 600–700 years ago, are now black because the intense sun has charred them. Though not petrified, the wood does not decompose because it is so dry in the region.

“Halong Bay,” on the other hand, is brimming with life and water. Located about a two hour’s drive from Hanoi, in Vietnam’s Quang Ninh Province, the bay consists of a dense cluster of some 1600 limestone monolithic islands each topped with thick jungle vegetation. Several of the islands are hollow, containing enormous caves. While tourists flock here to sail among these islands and explore a few of the caves, a community of around 1600 people also live on Halong Bay in four fishing villages. They live on floating houses and are sustained through fishing and marine aquaculture. I was fortunate to capture these two while on a late afternoon cruise—I assume coming in from a day of fishing. The lighting was not ideal, and I was shooting handheld, but those are some of the challenges of travel photography that I love.