Description
The Blyde River Canyon, in the north-east of South Africa, ranks among the largest vegetated canyons on the planet. The image is taken from the rim of the escarpment: below, the river widens into a calm stretch of water, slipped between sandstone domes with wooded flanks. The afternoon light sculpts the relief — slopes lit in tender green, russet walls left in shadow, cliffs fading into a bluish haze in the distance, as far as the plain that closes the horizon. Above, a deep sky carries a fleet of cumulus whose shadows travel across the ridges. Nothing here is arid: everything is covered, alive, saturated with vegetation, and that is what makes the place singular among the great canyons. A photograph of patience and of weather, in which depth is built plane by plane, from the rock of the foreground to the last cliff drowned in light.
