Beverly Houwing took this impeccably timed sunset photo in Namibia. In her caption for the National Geographic Photography contest, she wrote:
The dead trees at Dead Vlei, in Sossusvlei, Namibia, create stark silhouettes against the intense orange color of the sand. A dune towering 1,000 feet creates a backdrop as the shadow cast by a nearby dune moves across the wall of sand and shades the ground and trees of the dry mud flat.
It looks like a painting with exaggerated colors, but it’s a real landscape.
(Click the image to embiggen.)