Picture of the Day: A Desert Oasis in Libya

“This massive (and apparently dormant) volcano can be easily be seen in satellite views of Southern Libya, as a large black smear in the wind-scoured sands of the Sahara. The inner crater is bordered by a chain of small salt lakes which are sumps for the r w (seemingly potable, at least they tasted okay to me before I spat out a handful of brackish water from a depression adjacent to a palm tree) spring waters that feed the craters vegetation. Outside the outer rim of the crater are small black dunes of windblown volcanic ejecta. The winds here were very strong, at sunrise they were averaging over 60 kph at 300m above the rim of the outer crater, and about 20 kph at ground level.”

This is just one of 150 incredible photos from Steinmetz’s latest book Desert Air, the first comprehensive photographic collection of the world’s “extreme deserts,” which receive less than four inches of precipitation per year. George has spent 15 years on this epic body of work, capturing beautiful visions of deserts, from China’s great Gobi Desert to the Sahara in northern Africa to Death Valley in California.