On my second morning at Deadvlei, I had a much better idea of the kind of image I wanted. I saw the way the morning light had spread over these two trees the previous morning and knew that I wanted to create a composition that included both the long shadows and the detail of the clay pan for foreground interest (click through and you can zoom in to see all the pixels thanks to G+ pan & zoom in the lightbox).
This image was made to be captured either by a technical camera or a tilt-shift lens. Wanting to keep the trees plane parallel, I used about 10mm of fall to pull in more of the clay pan. I also had around a couple of degrees of tilt to make sure that everything from the nearest point of the clay pan to the top of the dunes and the tree were in focus.
From the previous day I knew that the sun would rise quickly and that the penumbra of the shadow of the dune behind us would add a very soft, natural gradient. This is also the time where the trees themselves were also fully side lit with the soft morning light.
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