South Africa’s Wim van den Heever Simply Gained the ‘Oscar’ of Wildlife Pictures!

It took this Pretoria-based photographer 10 years to get the dream shot. He by no means gave up. Now, he’s the Wildlife Photographer of the Year!

 

London, United Kingdom (19 October 2025) – Ons is trots. A South African has simply earned one of many greatest titles within the images world. The Pretoria-based Wim van den Heever has scooped Wildlife Photographer of the Year together with his award-winning shot taken in Namibia.

The competitors is taken into account the Oscars for wildlife images, run by the Natural History Museum in London. It’s been going for the reason that ‘60s. Each 12 months, almost 60,000 photos from greater than 90 international locations are entered in and solely a handful win.

Wim’s shot, titled ‘Ghost Town Visitor,’ didn’t simply win below its Urban Wildlife class, it additionally scooped the general title within the competitors.

The story of how he acquired there spans 10 years.

Wim has hosted images excursions all world wide, however the Namib Desert stored calling him again. Specifically, an deserted diamond mining city known as Kolmanskop.

There, he discovered indicators of the world’s rarest hyenas passing by way of at evening, when every thing fell completely nonetheless.

Brown hyenas are shy, nocturnal animals. There are solely about 4,000 to 10,000 left within the wild. They’re additionally essential to the ecosystem within the Namib Desert. They journey as much as 50km an evening to scavenge and redistribute vitamins all through the plains. Kolmanskop’s deserted buildings deliver perfect shelter and denning spots for them.

Finding tracks and droppings there lit the spark on what turned Wim’s decade-long mission to seize one wandering the ghostly streets.

It took him years.

And meticulous planning. He mapped out the potential routes a hyena would take by way of the city to seek out perfect placements for numerous digicam traps. Endured failed makes an attempt, thrashed tools and opposed situations that ruined the shot.

He did this for a decade, upon each return to Kolmanskop.

In June earlier this 12 months, the second lastly got here.

“My camera triggered three times that night. Once with me testing the scene. The second time, nothing happened, and the third time, there was a hyena in the picture,” Wim shares.

A lone brown hyena walked precisely the place he had hoped it might, in entrance of a crumbling Kolmanskop home, with mist rolling in from the Atlantic. The digicam clicked. And that was it, the image Wim had fixated over for a decade.

This month, he travelled to London the place he accepted his flowers for it. Wildlife Photographer of the Year.

“It’s exactly the way I envisaged the picture to be,” he says. “It’s exactly what I was looking for from day one. It’s why I went through all the effort, all those seasons to try and do it,” he says.

And that’s this week’s lesson in not giving up. It pays off once you discover the power to try to strive once more.

“This award is an absolute dream come true. It’s the Oscars of the Wildlife Photographers world and to stand on top for this small window in time is truly an honour,” says Wim.

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Sources: Linked above

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