“I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams…” This quote comes from the author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in his seminal children’s book The Little Prince. He understood the power and majesty contained within the silent desert landscape. Have you ever thought about desert shadows?
Let’s take a moment to reflect upon deserts.
Although the deserts may seem bleak, silent, or even lifeless at first glance, the truth is that these are robust natural environments where life finds a way to thrive despite the harsh conditions. Moreover, deserts provide some of the most beautiful, otherworldly landscapes on planet earth.
Louie Schwartzberg is a storyteller and filmmaker who has been shooting time-lapse photography of nature, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, non-stop. His work compresses time and puts you in sync with different forms of life within our interconnected world.
His work makes the invisible visible.
Louie’s camera tracks the movement of light through this canyon landscape in the desert. As the light changes and shadows move, we see the rock formations from a new perspective. The changing light reveals new layers of complexity, new shapes inside a seemingly barren landscape.
Through the lens of Louie’s camera, these harsh, dry environments appear tranquil and calm. The something throbbing, gleaming Saint-Exupéry refers to in his quote becomes faintly detectable to the viewer, desert shadows are bathing in the grandiosity of nature.
Let us know what you think of desert shadows!