Footprints of the Past
Our next stop was Fishriver Canyon, but since my favorite image from that evening is also a quiver tree image (and I just uploaded two such images), I'll skip that and head straight to our next destination: Lüderitz. The town itself was small and nothing special I would say, but our accommodation and host were really nice. The main reason why we went to Lüderitz was of course Kolmanskop, an old ghost town built in the middle of the desert. Back then, at the beginning of the 20th century, a railroad worker stumbled upon a gemstone, which he showed to his German supervisor, who immediately recognized it as a diamond. The Germans then declared this region a “restricted area”, started mining and built a rather large town in the middle of nowhere. They built up such wealth that they even had a theater, a bowling alley, a casino and an ice factory, which is pretty crazy considering this is in the middle of the desert and there is no water (in fact, they had to ship the water all the way north from Cape Town and transport it by rail to Kolmanskop). As the diamond field was depleted, the town was abandoned and is now being reclaimed by nature, resulting in some eerie lost places with dunes creeping into the desolate buildings.
Back to our trip: We knew we needed a permit to enter this ghost town, and Google Maps directed us to an office that apparently no longer exists. We drove around the block twice and then stopped right next to another office where my girlfriend asked for the permit. We were then told that we could get this permit at a cafe downtown, which surprised us a bit because we hadn't read that anywhere on the internet. Anyway, when we got there, there was a desk in a corner of the café with two people issuing these permits. We were really happy that we had finally found the place, got two sunrise permits so that we could enter the area earlier in the dark, had a coffee and drove to our accommodation. In the evening we did a bit of research as Kolmanskop is quite big and we didn't know where to go first. We knew we wanted to photograph the iconic door, so we searched the internet but only found vague references to its location (otherwise it might be crowded there already), which helped us narrow it down to a couple of buildings.
The next morning we were a little late, but we managed to find the door just in time. The whole scene felt so surreal, with all the abandoned buildings, the crumbling walls, the sand dunes in the rooms and the beautiful red morning glow that created some nice color contrast to the wall paint. It was absolutely stunning and we had this place all to ourselves, but after a few minutes the light on the sand in the foreground got really harsh and so we decided to continue exploring this amazing ghost town. Since we couldn't get into all the buildings on our first morning and were also a little bothered by all the footprints in our images, we decided to return the next morning in the hope that a strong wind might have swept them away. Again, we were the only people there at sunrise (which surprised us a bit as this composition is very famous and it was high season), but unfortunately the situation with the footprints hadn't changed. However, when editing this image, I thought the footprints fit the image very well, not only because they are in the sand, but because the whole ghost town is a huge footprint that mankind has left in the Namib Desert. I hope you like it!
Footprints of the Past
Our next stop was Fishriver Canyon, but since my favorite image from that evening is also a quiver tree image (and I just uploaded two such images), I'll skip that and head straight to our next destination: Lüderitz. The town itself was small and nothing special I would say, but our accommodation and host were really nice. The main reason why we went to Lüderitz was of course Kolmanskop, an old ghost town built in the middle of the desert. Back then, at the beginning of the 20th century, a railroad worker stumbled upon a gemstone, which he showed to his German supervisor, who immediately recognized it as a diamond. The Germans then declared this region a “restricted area”, started mining and built a rather large town in the middle of nowhere. They built up such wealth that they even had a theater, a bowling alley, a casino and an ice factory, which is pretty crazy considering this is in the middle of the desert and there is no water (in fact, they had to ship the water all the way north from Cape Town and transport it by rail to Kolmanskop). As the diamond field was depleted, the town was abandoned and is now being reclaimed by nature, resulting in some eerie lost places with dunes creeping into the desolate buildings.
Back to our trip: We knew we needed a permit to enter this ghost town, and Google Maps directed us to an office that apparently no longer exists. We drove around the block twice and then stopped right next to another office where my girlfriend asked for the permit. We were then told that we could get this permit at a cafe downtown, which surprised us a bit because we hadn't read that anywhere on the internet. Anyway, when we got there, there was a desk in a corner of the café with two people issuing these permits. We were really happy that we had finally found the place, got two sunrise permits so that we could enter the area earlier in the dark, had a coffee and drove to our accommodation. In the evening we did a bit of research as Kolmanskop is quite big and we didn't know where to go first. We knew we wanted to photograph the iconic door, so we searched the internet but only found vague references to its location (otherwise it might be crowded there already), which helped us narrow it down to a couple of buildings.
The next morning we were a little late, but we managed to find the door just in time. The whole scene felt so surreal, with all the abandoned buildings, the crumbling walls, the sand dunes in the rooms and the beautiful red morning glow that created some nice color contrast to the wall paint. It was absolutely stunning and we had this place all to ourselves, but after a few minutes the light on the sand in the foreground got really harsh and so we decided to continue exploring this amazing ghost town. Since we couldn't get into all the buildings on our first morning and were also a little bothered by all the footprints in our images, we decided to return the next morning in the hope that a strong wind might have swept them away. Again, we were the only people there at sunrise (which surprised us a bit as this composition is very famous and it was high season), but unfortunately the situation with the footprints hadn't changed. However, when editing this image, I thought the footprints fit the image very well, not only because they are in the sand, but because the whole ghost town is a huge footprint that mankind has left in the Namib Desert. I hope you like it!