A search for timelapse videos will bring up thousands of results, but the list of photographers shooting truly world-class time lapse work is remarkably short. They’re time consuming to create, requiring that a camera snap away for hours and hours at a time, capturing hundreds and in many cases, thousands of frames that will eventually be put together to create a sequence used for only a few seconds in a video. Patience is certainly a virtue in the world of time lapse photography.

South African adventure and travel photographer Martin Harvey is one of the patient few whose time lapse work truly captures the magnificence of nature. In this awe-inspiring video, he’s turned his lens on Namibia’s photogenic Namib Desert, documenting the ebb and flow of light across the unique, colorful landscape.

A coastal desert in southern Africa, the Namib stretches 1,200 miles along the Atlantic coasts of South Africa, Namibia, and Angola. For more than 55 million years, the Namib Desert has experienced arid conditions, making it the world’s oldest desert. Near the coast, towering sand dunes form a sand sea, while scattered mountains and gravel plains can be found further inland. Some of the dunes rise 300 meters into the sky and stretch for 32 kilometers – the 2nd largest in the world after China’s Badain Jaran Desert dunes.