A Photo Journey Through Namibia

Bernie called me last fall inviting me to join a group of dentist photographers on a photography workshop in Namibia. There were three others committed to the workshop with room for just one more person. They are all practicing dentists. I have photographed Bernie and Las Vegas dentist Doug multiple times over the last 12 years. The stories that come from being out in the wilderness together help bind our friendship together. Andy from Philadelphia and Ramon from Dominican Republic are also great dentists and photographers. They had taken my own workshops.

Despite the amazing photographs that come out of Namibia, I told Bernie it was out of the question. I am at the stage where I get paid to give workshops rather than paying to take one. And the $10,000 plus cost was not in my business budget.

Then we discovered two grandsons had graduation ceremonies in June, perfectly bookended around the workshop dates. By March I a little better cash flow from the business. It wasn’t too difficult to ask Barbara what she thought. She had been to Africa twice and I hadn't been at all. She said I had to go!

Namibia is a desert country on the southwest coast of Africa. It has some of the largest dune fields in the world. In the north are savannas and the huge Etosha National Park, along with numerous private game preserves that attract ecotourism. Along the Skeleton Coast are flamingos, seals and remnants of a few out of hundreds of shipwrecks that have occurred over the last two centuries. For those who enjoy landscape photography, Namibia presents countless opportunities to refine composition. Strong forms, minimal distractions, and changing light encourage a thoughtful approach. In many ways, it rewards the same principles I teach in my own workshops... seeing beyond the obvious and making intentional creative choices.

Namibia was colonized by Germany in the late 1800s. There is still a strong German presence both in location names and expats. South Africa took control from Germany in World War I. In 1990, Namibia gained its independence. Like the USA, it has a presidency, a two house government and judiciary. There are two parties, but the democratic socialist party (SWAPO) has dominated since the inception. That is beginning to change. Economic downturn, high youth unemployment, and high-profile corruption scandals have diminished the SWAPO to a bare majority in their congress. We saw evidence current conditions. There were many young men standing around in the few cities and beggars in many countryside locations.

I had opted for a small amount of misery on the trip. It was time for my periodic defoliation of actinic keratosis (precancerous skin activity) on my face. Every day starting a few days before my trip I would apply fluorouracil to my nose and cheeks. It was better to do this when I was away from Barbara and our social crowd at home. It got much worse than what you see in the picture, but it's a better choice than not having a nose at all.

Our leader was Noel. Bernie introduced us a dozen years ago. He is a full-time photographer and workshop leader. One of the things you pay for on a workshop is having the leader “put you on shots” much like a fishing guide would put you on fish. The rest is organizational skills and planning, which would be way to much for me to do myself for such a far off location. Noel’s six previous weeks in Namibia meant he had done all the necessary scouting and made necessary connections with local guides and lodging. Also, he was one of the drivers, which is quite a chore itself, considering the roads and driving from the left side of the road.

Getting to Namibia is an ordeal. I was in eastern Washington for the first grandson's graduation. That meant a flight to Seattle, then Frankfurt. I chose to catch a few hours sleep with a day room at the airport's Marriott. Then it was on to Windhoek, Namibia where I arrived the morning the workshop started. The others had arrived the day before, so I thought I would be holding everyone up. But Bernie had his tripod stolen out of his luggage and Doug had no luggage at all. It took awhile as he made arrangements to have it delivered to that night’s destination, 200 kilometers away. It didn't show up until the following day! Yes, he bought some extra underwear in town.

For our first evening we were exploring a portion of the Quiver Tree Forest. The quiver tree is a huge member of the aloe family, not totally dissimilar from my local Joshua trees that are huge yuccas. We explored for compositions in the late afternoon. The guys were all excited about photographing the Milky Way that night. Namibia is known for its night skies. Darkness is measured on the Bortle Scale of one to nine, with one having no light pollution. At dark sky parks like the Grand Canyon and Joshua Tree, finding Bortle 3 conditions is considered excellent. Most of what we saw in Namibia was Bortle 1.

The skies are amazing to look at and to photograph. As the others got positioned for their compositions, I felt my best shot was from the top of a rather large boulder It wasn’t more than a couple feet above ground, so I felt perfectly safe even with the reduce sense of balance that also affects my golf game. I don’t remember slipping or stepping backwards or exactly how it happened, but I do remember hitting a sizable rock with the right center of my back. Cracking a rib or two was a rather bad way to start a trip! I’m sure at least a couple of the other guys wondered if it was such a good idea to have me along. Their concerns were amplified when I tripped over a rock the next day, ending up on my face. Thankfully, the fall mostly hurt the ribs for a few minutes.The next twelve nights in Namibia would be spent trying to get comfortable. Standing and sitting up worked fine, but lying down wasn't fun. Once again, I had validated my article, Photography is a (Contact) Sport!

Back to the night shoot. We were interrupted by a noisy group of 20 or so tourists who clearly arrived in a more celebratory mood than our own. We were a bit annoyed as they shined there flashlights onto some of our foreground trees. Eventually, they returned to their bus and we got our shots.

The next day we were back at two quiver tree locations. We were really excited by the compositions that included rocks around some of the trees. While the others were getting their last sunset shots, I returned to our planned night location that we had scouted earlier. That’s when the same tourist mob showed up again. They pulled out tripods and iPhone like they wee new toys. It was just short of feeling getting railroaded out of town. Without the others nearby for support, I just returned to where they were and we decided to find some alternate locations.

That night I joked that I had talked to that group’s guide. I told my buddies that the groups was planned by someone who looked up photo workshops to see where the best locations would be in Namibia. They had found Wide Horizon Photo Tours (our group) and decided to copy the itinerary. I was kidding, of course.

The next day we traveled to a charming little seaside town, Luderitz where our accommodations were a small B&B overlooking the bay. The town's name sounds like it might mean luxurious light, but it was named after German general who was its founder in 1883. Nearby is Kolmanskop. This was an active diamond mining town in the early 1900s. When it became unproductive it was abandoned. As windows and doors were broken, the desert dunes started invading the buildings. This makes for some very uniquely eerie scenes. It has become popular enough that the property is guarded and there is an admission fee.

When you are into photography seriously, you will go out of your way to make sure you get good images. I mentioned how important our leader, Noel, was in that regard. He had arranged for us to get in a couple of hours before the normal opening time and when it was still dark. We tried for some night sky shots, but security lights came on and messed with our plans. But the scenes inside the buildings as daylight broke were otherworldly. They were part of the reason we all had come.

Much to our delight, we had finished most of our photography and the light started deteriorating around 8 am when the gates opened to the normal tourists. Five minutes later that busload of tourists was descending through the doors and windows and onto the hills of sand like red ants. They peered over our shoulders and tracked in front of our setups. Fortunately, we were pretty much finished for the morning. The best thing we could do was let them be and chuckle at their lack of courtesy. Had they actually copied our schedule? Doug let me post this picture of an intruder. You can see more of Doug's photography here.

We wondeered, "Had they really copied our itinerary?"

Traveling between locations in Namibia is quite the experience. Most visitors rent vehicles and drive themselves. Some camp, others stay in hotels or nice lodges as we did. All the vehicles seem to come with two spare tires, and for good reason. We drove hundreds of kilometers between locations, with most of that driving on washboard gravel roads. Our group had two pickups with covered beds. I rode in the back seat of the lead truck. Much of that time I was trying to stay comfortable while going through my images from the previous day. It had to be more stressful for the guys behind us as they followed our taillights in the dust. We used walkie talkies and announced to them whenever there was an approaching vehicle that would be coming out of the cloud of dust behind us. It was scary enough for them even with the warnings.

We looked on the bright side. At least a tour bus wouldn’t take people on roads like these. Our next stop was Sossusvlei. This is the area where famous dead trees are silhouetted against giant orange sand dunes. Photographers who haven’t been to this location are jealous of every photographer who has been there.

There are two gates into the dunes. The inner gate opens in the morning before the outer gate opens, so you want to stay between the two gates. Our rooms at Dead Valley Lodge were exceptional as were most of our lodges. Meals were often included. Breakfasts were nearly fancy as any Easter Brunch and dinners were not much different. The meat offerings were often kudu, springbok, oryx, zebra, impala, ostrich and warthog. I stayed away from almost all of these offerings, opting for fish, chicken or pork which I now believe was a mistake.

We scouted the sand dunes on the road to Deadvlei the first night. The next morning we were second in line at the what seemed like the start of a race. You want to get there well before sunrise if possible. If you have ever been on the cattle cars that take tourists to Upper Antelope Canyon near Page, Arizona, the last five kilometers are much like that trip on steroids. It was fun when our heads weren't hitting the ceiling of the truck!

Maybe half a dozen vehicles beat us to the parking area. From there you slog up a dune for about a kilometer before dropping into the flat pan that holds the Deadvlei trees. They say these trees were alive 900 years ago when there was water in the area. The arid desert has kept them from deteriorating. There was one guy that raced up the dune. Turns out he had left his camera running all night to create a timelapse or the Milky Way. It’s the only way you can shoot at night. Be the last out and the first in the next day. It’s tricky to be the last out, since you don’t want to get caught inside the gate. Timing is everything.

I made it up the dune with just a handful of photographers ahead of me. That included Andy and Doug from my group. Arriving early means there aren’t as many situations where you have to deal with people in your photos. I didn’t have to clone anyone out which is my strong preference. I pretty much took images with one, two, three and all the way up to seven dead trees, paying little attention to the artists’ rule of keeping odd numbers of objects. As the sun rose, it sliced across the background dunes and salt flat in interesting ways that improved results. When we had had our fill and light became too bright, headed back to parking just as numerous tourist buses were just arriving. In our minds, they had missed the show. We dumped buckets of sand out of our shoes as headed out.

While I knew Deadvlei would be a highlight of the trip, the monster dunes along the road in and out resulted in some of my favorite images of the entire trip. We “chased” oryx at the base of the dunes to add foreground interest. It is surprising how well wildlife does in such a desolate place. A few trees had to be positioned perfectly at the base of these dunes which were identified by numbers corresponding to their kilometers down the road. Surprisingly, my preference was not for the graceful curves of these orange monsters, but the overlapping angles that created geometrics patterns.

After returning a second morning to photograph the dunes we headed to our next destination, Walvis Bay. This is a small port city where a flat area has been carved out of the huge dune fields of the Namib Desert. We briefly visited salt ponds that produce one of the country’s main exports. I had looked forward to photographing the flamingos that populate the shallows along the beach. Many landscape photographers research prior to trips by looking at images others have taken in an area. I had in mind some compositions with these graceful birds coming out of the fog. There was no fog and the birds were too far from shore, so the plan didn’t work out.

The other main attraction at Walvis Bay is a trip south to Sandwich Harbour where the dunes meet the sea. A photo of the beach is the second photo at the top of this post. At high tide the area isn't accessible, but with proper timing our guide-driven vehicles climbed the dunes for perspectives of graceful sand and water. My many trips to dunes of the Southwest have been more productive. I prefer their sharper lines and the ability to explore them on foot. But riding up and down dunes at steep angles, knowing our driver is unlikely to tip our vehicle over, was quite a thrill. I did manage a "keeper" with blowing sands, seagulls and the surf and sand disappearing in the background mist.

We were all quite hungry when we returned to the restaurant at our beachfront hotel. Who should we find there? The busload of tourists from a few days before had somehow navigated the long way around on paved roads to get there. They had obviously been having a good time, based upon the cacophony that was coming from their corner of the small room. Two obvious locals, including a well dressed gentleman seated next to us, along with his very attractive companion, who I imagined to be a dignitary, just shook their heads as they perused the group and it’s lack of consideration for other diners. Guess who was on the beach with us attempting to photograph the flamingos the next morning!

We didn’t visit the stinky seal colony or the shipwrecks along the beach to the north of town. There were just too many other great things to photograph on our trip to Namibia. The next stop was Spitzkoppe, which means “pointed dome”. They call it the Matterhorn of Namibia which required quite a stretch of the imagination. We stayed at a beautiful resort called the Spitzkoppen Lodge. Like so many of the fancy lodges, individual buildings with canvas roofs and decks are spread out on the property. Bernie and I were sharing. Twin beds can be moved together to make a large king. In our case, we spread them apart to make sure there was no confusion about our relationship. Unlike hotels in the U.S., rooms were serviced every day.

June in Namibia is equivalent to January in the California desert. There is little need for heating. Except when we were there! The temperature dropped below 40˚ at night. We went out the first night to photograph the well known arch in the area. On the way back in Bernie said he wasn’t feeling all that well. It was pretty clear an hour later that he had food poisoning. Poor Bernie was miserable and freezing. No amount of blankets seemed to help. For summer circulation, they use open composite decking materials for the floors. It let plenty of cold air in. We didn’t think it was the water. We only drank bottled water, limiting any tap water to what might rinse out our toothbrush. Spitzkoppen Lodge is shown below.

Noel had made arrangements for us to visit a local tribe, called the Himba. This tribe lives primitively in clay huts. They have little water. To keep clean they cover themselves with a rose colored mixture of butterfat, red ochre, and aromatic resins and take smoke baths. The women lots of jewelry, but not cover their breasts. They show no self-consciousness around visitors. Like western women, they were fascinated to see their own pictures on our iPhones. The men and young boys wear loincloths. This works quite well to help them survive the heat of summer. During our visit, they appeared comfortable until the sun went behind Spitzkoppe. Then they looked cold. I’m sure they had sweatshirts hidden away somewhere, but they showed great discipline during our visit. Of course, they survive now on photographic tourism which includes not just financial compensation but an assortment of treats given as a thank you. The joy they showed in such simple living conditions was impressive. I have chosen images for this article that reflect that joy. There are more portrait types of images in my Namibia gallery.

I was sorry that Bernie, still in misery from the night before, had to miss that outing. That evening we were back out at the arch to photograph from a different perspective. I started having foreboding feelings that matched those described by Bernie the night before. The inevitable would happen. I raced to the toilet just in time for the most violent oral eruption of my lifetime. We decided that it might have been the pork we had eaten on successive nights. Warthog would have been a better choice! Fortunately, all I missed was a sunrise shoot of Spitzkoppe.

We were well beyond the halfway point of our trip as we headed north to Etosha National Park and two of more than 160 private game preserves in the country. Noel’s research had pinpointed a couple of productive locations for us. My primary goal was to shoot a lion and a single elephant from a low angle and develop them in black and white. I brought along a tricked out monopod that could be extended down to the ground from my seat in the safari vehicle. It turned out not to be necessary as my seat near the front was quite low to the ground where I could reach down outside the vehicle while triggering my camera. While not perfect for the elephant, I got the sought after shots as well as images of a number of other large cats.

Etosha National Park is huge. One strategy is to monitor the guided tourist vehicles and follow them. That's hoe we found a lion and lioness guarding their wildebeest kill from hyenas and pacing jackals. We drove around all afternoon looking for an elephant herd Noel had seen two weeks earlier, but were disappointed. With 2500 of these beasts in the park, you would think they would have cooperated. There are a similar number of giraffes. We saw and photographed many.

Creative landscape photography from Namibia with a focus on light and form.

A professional photography approach to Namibia’s desert scenery and subtle tones.

Namibia is inspiring and sobering. For photographers who value composition, simplicity, and a strong sense of place, it has everything one could wish for in twelve days. From a humanity perspective, those of us who have lived our entire lives in the modern world are reminded that our desires might not be so great had we been blessed with far less.

if you are a photographer wishing to visit Namibia, I highly recommend Wide Horizon Photo Tours. The photos included in this post are a very small fraction of my entire collection. A larger selection can be seen here or you may watch a video presentation with even a larger selection here. As always, contact me if you are interested in prints.

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Photographing Namibia

A Photo Journey Through Namibia

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