{"id":1459,"date":"2013-02-19T21:35:46","date_gmt":"2013-02-19T20:35:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/?p=1459"},"modified":"2014-04-14T07:42:49","modified_gmt":"2014-04-14T06:42:49","slug":"getting-that-wild-west-feel-down-under-in-namibia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/?p=1459","title":{"rendered":"Getting that “Wild West” feel – “down under” in Namibia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just outside the vast “dune sea” of the Namib Naukluft Park is the last place you can get gas, before you venture into the coppery-red dunes of Sossusvlei<\/a>, a dry but harsh landscape where only the most well-adapted creatures can survive. The place consists of the Solitaire Lodge, a small coffee shop and gas station, and a few ramshackle buildings. Adding extra character are a number of rusty vintage cars scattered about the property, surrounded by sand and the occasional cactus. It gives the place a “wild west” feel you might get outside Death Valley in the U.S. – you can almost imagine tumbleweeds rolling by. But you’re in Solitaire, Namibia.<\/p>\n

When we stopped in Solitaire, I immediately thought about how cool the old cars would look in the morning light, in spite of the clouds which cut down on the shadows I was looking for. But when I processed the photos, though they looked OK, they didn’t quite capture what I had been looking for in my mind’s eye:<\/p>\n

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Luckily, though, these were RAW format photos, so I decided to play around a bit with the sliders on the program Photomatix<\/a> (which is good for HDR photography but can create many other effects). \u00a0Some people will not agree with this degree of manipulation, but I like how things turned out:<\/p>\n

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Just outside the vast “dune sea” of the Namib Naukluft Park is the last place you can get gas, before you venture into the coppery-red dunes of Sossusvlei, a dry but harsh landscape where only the most well-adapted creatures can survive. The place consists of the Solitaire Lodge, a small coffee shop and gas station, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[339,1303],"tags":[78,1791,748,791,470,793,792],"class_list":["post-1459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-namibia","category-genphotography","tag-effects","tag-photography","tag-photomatix","tag-solitaire","tag-sossusvlei","tag-tone-mapping","tag-vintage-cars"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1459"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2865,"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459\/revisions\/2865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}