It was already mid afternoon and we still had to travel 5 hours through the Moroccan desert with a four-wheel drive to reach the place where our guide was waiting for us with dromedaries. I had to shoot an opening image for an article on Morocco and we wanted to show pristine dunes and a guide walking up the dunes with 2 dromedaries. Easier said than done.

When shooting a travel reportage, one always has a very tight and calculated schedule and we needed low sunlight shining on exactly the right side of the dunes. We arrived just in time, having about 30 minutes left to do this shoot! Immediately after stopping the car, we jumped out and I went to determine the right spot for this image. I expressed my wishes to our guide and asked him if he really understood the fact that we could only do this once, because we where loosing the sunlight quickly. Luckily we had an excellent guide and he started walking up the dunes. Not something that is done within 5 minutes and he had to reach the exact right spot to make this image work.

At a certain point, the dromedaries stopped and for some reason they didn’t want to continue walking. I felt the tension building with the magazine's editor-in-chief at my side. We both saw that this could be a beautiful picture, if the dromedaries would indeed make it to the top of the dunes. We were communicating with the guide by hand gestures. He understood the importance of the dromedaries continuing their walk to the top, but they just seemed to have a mind of their own. After a few very long minutes they finally started moving again and I could start shooting a few images. This one was the selected opening image for the magazine publication. We were very happy!