© Frans Lanting/National Geographic

Photographer Frans Lanting’s surreal landscape of Namibia’s Dead Vlei in the June issue of National Geographic magazine has many asking whether it’s a painting or photograph. Lanting took a break from his current assignment in Africa to discuss the photograph, the result of a “perfect moment” that “came when the sun reached all the way down to the bottom of the sand dune just before it reached the desert floor.”