Carol Polich, a teacher and resident of Bozeman, Montana, has loved the desert for as long as she can remember. An “aspiring professional” photographer, she has visited Africa often to explore the great Namib Desert with its dunes that are among the world’s tallest and most dramatic. One morning, while on a trip there last May, she got up before dawn and hiked three miles up into the sand dunes to reach the viewpoint from which she saw the scene above, just after sunrise, with its striking patterns and textures. “There were a few whippy clouds in the sky,” she recalls, “the soft light accentuated the pastel coral colors, and the green tinge of the camel thorn trees provided a beautiful touch.” She placed her Minolta Maxxum 7xi with a 75-300mm zoom lens on a tripod, stopped the lens down to f/11 for good depth of field, and zoomed in slightly for a composition she liked. To add a touch of warmth to the scene, she placed an 81B warming filter over the lens, and exposed for 1/15 second on Fujichrome Velvia film.