The 10-year effort to {photograph} the uncommon hyena stalking a diamond mining ghost city

Van den Heever runs nature pictures excursions all over the world and returns to the Namib Desert annually. During his preliminary visits, he grew to become satisfied {that a} brown hyena was roaming the ghost city at night time. “I would see either droppings or tracks of a hyena in the area,” he says. He quickly had the thought of photographing the hyena within the putting setting of the ghost city.

After attempting a number of totally different approaches, Van den Heever settled on waking between 02:00-03:00 to return to Kolmanskop to arrange his digicam lure whereas the city was totally empty. Capturing the shot, nevertheless, was exceptionally tough. The brown hyena is a shy animal, primarily energetic at night time. For years, Van den Heever would solely catch a glimpse of 1 far within the distance from the city, usually working in the other way.

Added to that was the daunting surroundings of the Namib Desert. Easterly winds introduced sands that may pile up a metre (3.3ft) excessive towards his pictures gear within the night time. “I had one or two years where cameras just got absolutely trashed,” he says. When a westerly wind was blowing in off the ocean, it introduced thick banks of fog. “Then even if there’s a hyena in your picture, you can’t see it, because the fog’s just too thick.”

Finally, there was the query of the place to place the digicam lure. Van den Heever imagined the route a hyena would possibly take whereas roaming by way of the deserted city. “I always had in my mind that if something’s going to walk from this direction to this direction, it’ll have to come through this plane,” says Van den Heever. “And if I can time it correctly, I can get the hyena here, and I can get the house there. And that was basically how I went about choosing the composition and lining up the cameras.”