Namibia
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Ansco B2 Cadet: Photography with an Old Box Camera
Sure, today’s fancy digital cameras have a lot of tricks to ensure your photos turn out picture-perfect. Â But compared to the simplicity of an old box camera like Ansco’s B2 Cadet, the photos aren’t THAT much better! Basically a wooden box without any real lens, and a 1/60 second shutter that allows light into a
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Vintage Camera: Kodak Duaflex II
One of the key aspects of the vintage cameras I collect is that they should function. Â This was the case with the Kodak Duaflex II, a plastic (bakelite) camera manufactured from 1950 to 1954. Â It is normally held at waist level, and you look down into the brilliant glass viewfinder, which shows where the camera
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From the Township to the Championship: The Amazing Story Behind One Photo
This is Sofia Simon, a fifteen-year-old, in Giza, Egypt. Â She’s on a layover in Cairo, on her way to compete in the World Biathle Championships in Cyprus. Â Never heard of biathle? Â Eighteen months ago, neither had Sofia. Â Eighteen months ago, she couldn’t swim, either. Â And tomorrow she will represent her country in a sport that
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Namibia: Street View
I don’t think we really have Google Street View in Namibia just yet. In fact, I don’t believe they have worked out where the different house numbers are on the streets – GPS systems just get you to the right street, and the rest is up to you. So I took a drive through Windhoek
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Check out Namibia’s ‘Shishani’
One of Namibia’s rising young talents needs your help! Namibian musicians have a hard time “breaking out” – primarily as a result of Namibia’s small population – just over two million, around the same size as the city of Houston! Â Namibia also has one of the biggest income disparities in the world, which means that
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Found memories…and a lost roll of film
Here’s a fun mystery to try and solve. For my (recent) birthday, my kids went down to Otto’s, the local “junk and curiosities” dealer and picked out for me the newest additions to my growing vintage camera collection. Â In addition, my youngest was excited to have found an original box for the Agfa Billy Compur
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Got Drones?
Lately there has been increasing mention of the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for unexpected purposes. For example, both India and Namibia have been experimenting with the use of UAVs to control poaching, thanks to a $5 million grant given by Google to the WWF. Here’s a video showing how it works in Namibia (here’s
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Namibian Fairy Circles Mystery Solved AGAIN!
It’s fun to ponder those unsolved mysteries of nature we’ve all heard about from childhood onward. Last March I blogged that one of those “nature’s unsolved mysteries” was unsolved no more – Namibia’s “fairy circles.” Of course, depending on where you grew up, this may be the first time you’ve ever heard of them. Â The
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Namibia’s Dwindling Historical Archives
At 23 years and 8 days old, Namibia is starting to face the very real possibility that its historical archives – the artifacts and memories documenting the country’s long fight to achieve nationhood and defeat apartheid – may be lost forever. Most of Namibia’s original revolutionaries are now in their 70s, and when you search
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Female Entrepreneur Launches Indiegogo Crowdfunding Campaign for Township Bicycle Touring Company
Here in Namibia, where income disparity is one of the highest in the world (THE highest, depending on whose figures you use) and unemployment hovers around 34 percent, small entrepreneurs in both the formal and informal sector are likely to be the biggest drivers of Namibia’s economy in the near future. This is something young
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Namibian Nights: The Best Timelapse Ever
I’ve looked at a lot of timelapses, and after a certain number of them you just start to want to fast forward through them because they’re spectacular and all, but after awhile everything just sort of starts to look the same. This one, however, is different. Not only because I’ve tried to take photos in
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Attenborough’s “Africa” Features Namibia – Prepare to be Amazed! (updated)
If you have access to BBC One (or live in the UK, where you can stream it from their website), you’ll want to check out the six-part series on Africa that began airing Wednesdays starting January 2nd. Â The first episode, somewhat broadly titled “Kalahari” features wildlife from Namibia, from tiny wasps and spiders to giraffes
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Namibia’s “N/a’ankuse” Needs a Filmmaker
The N/a’an ku se charity lodge, wildlife-sanctuary-and-a-whole-bunch-of-other-stuff is looking for a filmmaker. It’s not a high-paying job, but it’s a good cause and a great opportunity to hang out in Namibia and take pictures of cool stuff. The organization occupies a large piece of land just east of Namibia’s capital Windhoek, where a number of
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Destination Namibia: How do you Market a Country?
I remember talking to one of Namibia’s tourism officials shortly after they had returned from the 2011 Adventure Travel World Summit in Chiapas, Mexico, and he was pretty excited about Namibia’s prospects in hosting the 2013 summit, knowing it would be the first time the event would be hosted in Africa. Â At the time, he
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In Namibia, the best light for photos is within 10 minutes of sunrise
Driving through the Namibian desert just outside the coastal town of Swakopmund at about 0545 can give you a real visual treat. It would have been more spectacular with a bit more of the fog/mist the area is known for, but within 10 or 15 minutes of sunrise (before or after) you can get some
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Hope of Good Hope gets a Sponsor
It seems that the “Home of Good Hope”, a local soup kitchen that feeds approximately 350 desperately poor children in a local township shantytown, has gotten a Dutch “gemeente” (roughly equivalent to a county) as an official sponsor. TAZM Pictures recently made a promotional video for the Home of Good Hope, and it receives regular
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Gentle Giants: Elephant Encounter II
The sheer power and grace of elephants is difficult to convey. When they come in from the bush to drink water, and roll around in the mud, they absolutely dominate the scene, and other animals wait patiently until they’ve had their fill. It’s easy to just sit and watch these creatures interact with each other
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A Day in Lüderitz – Two Different Soundtracks
Recently my daughter and I took a trip to the small, somewhat odd Namibian coastal town of Lüderitz. I say it’s odd because we arrived on a Saturday afternoon, after driving a long, winding road which seemed unable to keep the sand dunes at bay – at several points the dunes were slowly making their
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Photographing the Ghost Town of Kolmanskop
Just outside the small, quaint port town of Luderitz, Namibia is a popular tourist destination known as Kolmanskop. This former diamond mining town, where once diamonds could be collected from the surface sand as they lay glinting in the moonlight, has been abandoned and is now gradually being taken over by the sand, which gets
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Zebras at Dusk
The “golden hour” directly before sunset offers really interesting options for photography. If you’re on a game drive in Namibia at the right time in the right place, you can get some truly stunning photos. Unfortunately, however, you’re at the mercy of the driver many times, and if you’re facing directly into the sun it
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Windhoek to Swakopmund: the Scenic Route
You can get from Namibia’s capital, Windhoek, to the coastal city of Swakopmund, in around 4 hours via a paved road with one lane in each direction. Or you can head directly west from Windhoek, and you’ll quickly hit a gravel road (with a somewhat ironic “100 kph” speed limit sign) that provides a much
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Caprivi is for the Birds
Caprivi is that northeasternmost region in Namibia that looks so odd on a map. I’m sure there is a really interesting historical reason dating from the colonial days for Caprivi being part of Namibia. But for now it just sticks out there, too thin to really even qualify as a panhandle. It borders Angola, Zambia,
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Scenes from the Kavango
The thing you notice about the Kavango region is the endlessly long, straight roads. You expect it in Nebraska or Kansas, but somehow here the roads seem surprising. The main road running east-west through this region bordering Namibia’s northern border with Angola is well-maintained and passes village after village of thatched huts, reed fences, yellow