Global Eye: The White Desert, Egypt

White Desert, Egypt

Photographer: Anja Cronenberg from Haarlem, the Netherlands.

Getting the Shot: I don't understand why the White Desert isn't much more famous than it is. With its white chalk rock formations, the White Desert is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. It is located in the Libyan desert, close to the Farafra oasis, in between Dakhla and Bahariya (west-central Egypt). You have to travel off road with a jeep (and a guide) to get there.

The Details: I took the photo just a few minutes before sunset. At that time the light seemed to change the landscape into a pink and blue pastel drawing. Being in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by all those surreal rock formations gave me goose bumps of pure happiness. Believe me, it really did! That night we slept on the sand under a sky with so many stars that I felt like I was in a planetarium.

This particular rock formation is called "The chicken and the mushroom." I've got a similar photo without people in it, but I like this one better because they give scale to those rocks.

The photo is from September of 2002, made with a Canon EOS300 with standard 28-80 lens. At that time I always used Fuji 200 ISO slide film.

We love how surreal the landscape is in this shot, and how the people are so dwarfed by the rock formations. Think your photo is good enough for Global Eye? Add your photos to our Flickr pool and we may feature them on the blog.

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