Three tribes, 700km, dust, desert and the Canon EOS R: Brent Stirton's vanishing Namibian world

Over the last two decades, Brent has travelled the world over on assignments relating to issues such as wildlife and conservation, global health, diminishing cultures, sustainability and the environment. But he admits he always feels the draw back to Africa, most recently for his ongoing work documenting Namibian tribal culture: the San (or Bushmen), Himba and Herero tribes.

"They’re minority groups in this country, but all of them have something unique to offer," he explains. "The Bushmen are the ultimate smart survivors, a group that's authentic but has also learned to use its own culture as a money-making device. They keep an original lifestyle for six months of the year, and the next six months they work with lodges and tourism to showcase their culture.

But it's more than a smaller size and a silent shutter that Brent wanted for his work. "There are advantages to mirrorless cameras that I want to incorporate into my photography, but I also wanted to have the same colour fidelity and manual selection, as well as a battery that lasts me a long time. Plus I need something that will perform in low light – this camera really does that for me."

The reason this is important, Brent says, is that it "makes it easier for me to focus on being creative. The great thing with photography is that you see something, and it's like jumping out of a plane or climbing a mountain – it's our version of those feelings, like surfing a huge wave. Every now and again, all the elements come together in the picture and you know you have something timeless."

Dust, desert and the Canon EOS R system

The dramatic ochre scenes, vibrant tribal dress, and expanses of desert landscape didn't disappoint Brent on this shoot. But the open plains in Africa's winter brought wind and subsequent swathes of airborne dust that made it challenging to shoot in the multitude of desert locations.

"I had guys battling to hold on to my lighting," Brent says of a particularly windy occasion. "In front of me I had three uniquely beautiful local women, and they were struggling because of the wind blowing dust in their eyes. But what I noticed was that when they closed their eyes, they became more serene."

As Brent raised his camera, everything fell into place. "Suddenly, this woman existed in her own universe. I was able to take away all the lighting and just observe this woman standing there in this windstorm, with these dust clouds going by, with her own dignity. It's that kind of serendipity that I'm hoping for. That's the best kind of photographic opportunity for me."

Brent shoots with a Profoto setup to achieve his studio-lit aesthetic. This was accompanied by the Canon EOS R with its full-frame 30MP sensor and innovative lens mount that allows for faster communication between camera and lenses. Brent used the Canon RF 50mm f/1.2L USM, Canon RF 24-105MM F/4L IS USM and Canon RF 35mm f/1.8 IS Macro STM lenses – as well as his existing EF lenses, using the Mount Adapter EF-EOS R adapter.

This setup yielded what Brent describes as "impressive" resolution. "The images seem sharper somehow, a little more three-dimensional."

Canon EOS R's low-light performance

Chasing the story rather than the light, Brent lists low light as one of the consistent challenges in photojournalism. "I photographed a beautiful Himba girl in the place where she lives and sleeps," he says. "It's pretty dim in there: their doorways are small and there was no indoor lighting. But despite that, I was shooting at ISO3200 and ISO6400 with complete confidence."

Time after time, Brent found the EOS R system rose to the challenge, with its capability to focus in low-light conditions down to -6EV – conditions that would have been prohibitively dark in the past, such as shooting at night with only a flickering campfire for light.

"Throughout the trip, this new system was offering me some of the best low-light performance I've ever seen from a Canon camera. Every time I focused on something, it hit it immediately."

Travelling more than 2,000 kilometres over five days, and working to deadlines, means that Brent demands a lot from his cameras, including the battery life. Pairing the Canon EOS R with the Battery Grip BG-E22 battery grip doubled its battery capacity. "Yesterday I filled a 64GB card, shooting RAWs and large JPEGs – over 1,500 shots and I still had two bars left on the battery,” he says. “To my mind, that's impressive."

With technological limitations overcome, Brent found the biggest challenge came from nature: the pervasive dust. "On this particular shoot, we were in the desert a lot. There were very fine particles of dust blowing all of the time, but I didn't get a single piece of dust on the sensor. My lenses were working perfectly, and I didn't hear any sound from dust inside the lenses, either."

The Canon EOS R's sensor is protected when the lens is removed: "This gate comes down when you take the lens off the camera, which is there protecting your sensor. That's a huge deal for me, because one of the things that photographers hate most about digital is dirt on your sensor."

Brent needn't have feared. The resulting portraits, landscapes, and reportage images combine in celebration of a diminishing world. "I am trying to dignify the people that I photograph," he says. "There's often a low angle in my shots, where there's a sort of heroic nature to these people, because that's how I see them."