Ténéré Paraglider, Niger, 1999

A paraglider casts a shadow over the dunes of Niger's Ténéré desert. A south-central tract of the Sahara, the 150,000-square-mile (400,000-square-kilometer) Ténéré is one of Africa's most forbidding regions. Hot, dusty harmattan winds blow across the bone-dry desert, which receives an annual rainfall of about 1 inch (25 millimeters).

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Journey to the Heart of the Sahara," March 1999, National Geographic magazine)