Sundial

The remnants of a forest frozen in time, two fossilised camel thorn trees stand isolated in Namibia’s Namib-Nakluft National Park. The area is known as the Deadvlei and is a clay pan into which seasonal rainfall used to flood from the Tsauchab river. When the rains failed and the river dried up, the trees were left to die in the desert heat, cut off by the shifting dunes. Here, the scene resembles a sundial; the foreground tree is the gnomon which casts a shadow onto the white pan or dial below.