It took this Pretoria-based photographer 10 years to get the dream shot. He never gave up. Now, he’s the Wildlife Photographer of the Year!

 

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

The competition is considered the Oscars for wildlife photography, run by the Natural History Museum in London. It’s been going since the ‘60s. Each year, nearly 60,000 images from more than 90 countries are entered in and only a handful win.

Wim’s shot, titled ‘Ghost Town Visitor,’ didn’t just win under its Urban Wildlife category, it also scooped the overall title in the competition.

The story of how he got there spans 10 years.

Wim has hosted photography tours all around the world, but the Namib Desert kept calling him back. Specifically, an abandoned diamond mining town called Kolmanskop.

There, he found signs of the world’s rarest hyenas passing through at night, when everything fell totally still.

Brown hyenas are shy, nocturnal animals. There are only about 4,000 to 10,000 left in the wild. They’re also crucial to the ecosystem in the Namib Desert. They travel up to 50km a night to scavenge and redistribute nutrients throughout the plains. Kolmanskop’s abandoned buildings bring ideal shelter and denning spots for them.

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

It took him years.

And meticulous planning. He mapped out the possible routes a hyena would take through the town to find ideal placements for countless camera traps. Endured failed attempts, thrashed equipment and adverse conditions that ruined the shot.

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

In June earlier this year, the moment finally came.

“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 exactly where he had hoped it would, in front of a crumbling Kolmanskop house, with mist rolling in from the Atlantic. The camera clicked. And that was it, the picture Wim had fixated over for a decade.

This month, he travelled to London where 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 when you find the strength to try and try again.

“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.

Sources: Linked above
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