A Journey into the Desert with

Leo Francis ABIPP

We all fantasise about leaving the monotony of life to travel the globe and visit the beautiful natural wonders of the world – for Leo Francis ABIPP – this dream is a reality. Combining his adventurous spirit, love of extreme sport and creative vision, Leo works as a photographer on behalf of Red Bull, regularly having work featured in the national media and getting sponsored kit from leading photography outlets.

In this piece, he takes us through a photographer’s enduring journey to capture some of the most intense athletic endeavours, in the remotest destinations and severest conditions.

In the heart of Namibia is the Namib desert. Namib means ‘vast place’, which gives a slight insight into the scale and grandeur of the oldest desert on earth. The sand dunes of the Namib desert and the famous Skeleton Coast are perhaps two of the most photographed landscapes in the world – in equal part alluring, evocative, mysterious and foreboding.

In the ancient expanse of the Namib-Naukluft National Park, with the Namib desert at its heart, endless skies merge with the world’s highest, towering sand dunes - they stretch out for hundreds and hundreds of milesnothing else - just sand and sky. And then, at the coast, the Atlantic breakers come crashing onto the shore amid colonies of thousands of seals, rolling in on the cold seas of the Benguela Current all the way from Antarctica. It is an inhospitable, brutal and utterly beautiful part of our planet.

Race To The Wreck

Leo Francis Abipp

If you’re looking for a remote, truly epic (a word that gets banded around too much these days, but it does apply to the Namib) place for a photoshoot, the Namib desert is it!

I’m lucky enough to head out there each year to shoot a selection of hardy souls whose aim is to cross the desert on foot. Their journey takes them 303km from the source of the usually bone dry Kuiseb River (I have seen it flow once for the first time in 30 years) to the famous landlocked shipwreck, the Eduard Bohlen. This feat of endurance takes four days and is an event created by the UK expedition company Rat Race. I have the pleasure of shooting and taking part in many of their events across the globe, but the Rat Race, ‘Race to the Wreck’, as it’s called, is a particular favourite of mine. CEO and general adventure wizard of Rat Race Jim Mee created the route.

2023 was my third time shooting the event, one of those times being back in 2019, my last trip before lockdown.

It was the infamous Sport Relief crossing of the Namib where Grimmy had an exceptionally bad time with heat exhaustion, and Judge Rinder surprised us all by showing he was an absolute beast, running the whole thing, taking it in his stride and being an all-round legend in the process.

Each time I shoot this event, I fall in love with the Namib even more. The Namib Desert is an incredible place that will take your breath away. As a photographer, it’s one of the most exciting places to be.

Shooting the Rat Race ‘Race to the Wreck’ event is an epic adventure. It’s a chance to capture incredible images of the Namib Desert and to see the landscape in a way that few people ever get to experience. The magnificent Namib desert with tiny specks of endurance athletes running through that desolate expanse makes for truly magical images.

One of my favourite things to do as a photographer is to capture people’s life-changing journeys across a place that is so mind-blowingly epic and remote. I love to go to places where few people have ever stepped. To capture people putting it all out there and striving to complete a challenge is a humbling experience. To give the participants images of themselvess in these locations when they are looking their best, their worst and truly broken is a very special thing to be able to do. I am so grateful I get to do that as my job. I love to experience this journey with them and to create images they will always treasure. This process creates a bond; many of the participants I shoot in these events I am now privileged to call good friends.

So what’s it like to shoot in a place like this? The light in the desert is best in the early morning and late afternoon when the sun is low in the sky and casts long shadows over the dunes. You get beautiful shapes created from shadows and highlights. These are the moments when the desert comes alive, when the colours of the sand and the rocks are at their most vibrant. You can get utterly spectacular images at these times.

Top Tips

As amazing as the event is, and the experience is, protecting your equipment is always in your mind. So I’m not one to get mega preachy and techy, but here are my top tips for shooting in the desert:

Don’t go in without protection

Tights, bring loads of pairs of tights, cut them up into tubes, and put them over your lenses to stop the sand from getting in. Hearing your lens grind as you zoom or focus is a truly horrible sound, and adding protection can stop this from happening.

Try and use a lens per body

If you can have a body for each lens, you don’t need to change lenses; it can get pretty windy in a desert. If you’re shooting a Duran Duran video, that’s great, but if you’re swapping a lens in a sandstorm, it’s not the best.

Invest in a decent bag

This might be a niche tip, but I often run some of the routes, so I bring a big ‘base camera bag’ (I highly recommend a Pelicase for this. They are sand and dust resistant, and if you’re travelling with a crew, you know, if this bag gets moved when you’re not there, that your kit will be as safe as it can be.) and a small on-the-fly camera bag. This allows me to be quickly mobile but keep a lot of my gear in my base camera bag in a vehicle and safe from the sand.

Clean your shit, a lot

Google this as there are multiple, multiple ways to clean your sandy gear; choose what you think gives best reduced risk to reward vs speed. I’m not going to recommend what I do here as it may not be good for some.

Race To The Wreck Leo Francis

But as beautiful as the sand formations are, the sand is your camera’s enemy - it gets everywhere - you can’t stop it - it just does. As much as I love shooting ‘Race to the Wreck’, the event is not just about capturing great photographs. It’s also a chance to disconnect from the world and be off-grid for a while. In a world that is always connected, always on, it’s refreshing to be in a place where there is no signal, no Wi-Fi, and no distractions. It’s just you, your camera, and the desert. My all-time favourite thing about this event is the desert camps.

Camping in the desert is an experience that is hard to describe. The silence is almost overwhelming, broken only by the sound of the wind blowing through the dunes. The stars in the night sky are brighter than you’ve ever seen them, and the Milky Way seems to stretch out endlessly. It’s a place that makes you feel small and insignificant, but at the same time, it’s a place that fills you with awe and wonder.

As you can probably tell, I love the Namib and love shooting there - it’s a vibe. If you ever get the chance or the inclination for an off-grid, remote photographic adventure, the Namib is a place I’d highly recommend. Most importantly, don’t forget your bucket and spade!

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