ocean Archives - Chris de Blank Photography

Oh wow, where is this year going?? Half way through March already and this is only my first blog post for the year. Such neglect of my website. I will have to try and rectify that over coming months. I’ve a few ideas for topics rolling around in my head but getting them out is another issue. But for now I’d just like to talk about my results at the Wagin Woolorama Photography Competition last weekend and to give this Agricultural Show a plug as it is a really enjoyable day out.

Photo Comp

Firstly I’d like to thank the organisers of the Photography Competition that runs as part of Wagin Woolorama. Glenys and her team do a great job every year putting together this competition.

1st Place ‘A Half of Anything’ – Repeating Doorways

This year, they introduced two new special categories, each with great prize money for the winner. I was fortunate enough to take out the Portrait category with this image of the Namibian man starting a fire the tradition way, which most of you have possibly seen before. If you’d like to see the winning landscape image by my friend Richard Hall please click here.

1st Place Portrait – Fire Starter

Here’s my other entries that did well this year.

2nd Place Open Colour – KT The Cockatoo

Highly Commended Mono – Moses Rock

Two Trees - Highly Commended Landscape 2019 Wagin Woolorama

Highly Commended Landscape – Two Trees

Evening Rodeo

After the day events have finished, like the shearing, sheep dog trials and judging of the animals, there’s the evening rodeo. I love to watch the action and also the fashions. The checked shirts, bright colours, fancy jeans and those hand made leather saddles. Love it!

The dust, setting sun and cowboy hats

Bright coloured clothing

Cowgirl clothing

Bronc riding

Back to the Coast

After visiting the sand dunes of Sossusvlei we headed back to the coast and the town of Swakopmund. This is where the dunes meet the sea at Sandwich Harbour. The flight in was spectacular as we took the scenic route up the coast and flew over two shipwrecks in the sand dunes and the incredible shapes and patterns of the dunes and ocean (more pics to follow another day). I went for a walk around town when we first arrived in Swakopmund, bought some bangles from some tribal women that had a little stall set up, walked around the ornate and colourful buildings of German influence. Our DMC (our Namibian Travel Agent) took our tour group out to dinner to a really popular seafood restaurant called The Tug. Fabulous food, decor, architecture (just like a tugboat) and service.

4 Wheel Driving

The next morning a few of us went on a 4WD tour to Sandwich Harbour. We stopped at the salt lakes then drove through the dunes for a while before heading along the beach to our destination. On the way we stopped by a helicopter that had parked up on the beach. They were setting up sets for the filming of Transformers 5. We also saw lots of baby seals who had been abandoned by their mothers as they were weak. Evidently this is a very common occurrence, but as we noticed when we flew in the day before, the number of seals along this part of the coast is massive, so I guess the percentage that are abandoned is relatively small. We saw lots of birdlife including two types of Flamingos and some migratory waders we see during the summer at home.