{"id":203479,"date":"2025-10-16T05:20:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T05:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/203479\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T05:20:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T05:20:14","slug":"the-10-year-effort-to-photograph-the-rare-hyena-stalking-a-diamond-mining-ghost-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/203479\/","title":{"rendered":"The 10-year effort to photograph the rare hyena stalking a diamond mining ghost town"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Van den Heever runs nature photography tours around the world and returns to the Namib Desert once a year. During his initial visits, he became convinced that a brown hyena was roaming the ghost town at night. &#8220;I would see either droppings or tracks of a hyena in the area,&#8221; he says. He soon had the idea of photographing the hyena in the striking setting of the ghost town.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">After trying several different approaches, Van den Heever settled on waking between 02:00-03:00 to return to Kolmanskop to set up his camera trap while the town was entirely empty. Capturing the shot, however, was exceptionally difficult. The brown hyena is a shy animal, mainly active at night. For years, Van den Heever would only catch a glimpse of one far in the distance from the town, often running in the opposite direction.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Added to that was the daunting environment of the Namib Desert. Easterly winds brought sands that would pile up a metre (3.3ft) high against his photography equipment in the night. &#8220;I had one or two years where cameras just got absolutely trashed,&#8221; he says. When a westerly wind was blowing in off the ocean, it brought thick banks of fog. &#8220;Then even if there&#8217;s a hyena in your picture, you can&#8217;t see it, because the fog&#8217;s just too thick.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1760510169_149_grey-placeholder.png\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 hagXkB hide-when-no-script\" aria-label=\"image unavailable\"\/><img decoding=\"async\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/p0m8k8ym.jpg.webp.webp\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Wim van den Heever Van den Heever captured other animals besides the brown hyena, including a jackal (Credit: Wim van den Heever)\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 bGQwLJ\"\/>Wim van den HeeverVan den Heever captured other animals besides the brown hyena, including a jackal (Credit: Wim van den Heever)<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Finally, there was the question of where to put the camera trap. Van den Heever imagined the route a hyena might take while roaming through the abandoned town. &#8220;I always had in my mind that if something&#8217;s going to walk from this direction to this direction, it&#8217;ll have to come through this plane,&#8221; says Van den Heever. &#8220;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.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Van den Heever runs nature photography tours around the world and returns to the Namib Desert once a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-203479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}