In a world saturated with fleeting digital images, it is a photograph born of immense patience, profound perseverance, and a touch of the supernatural that has risen to claim the ultimate accolade.
South African photographer Wim van den Heever has been crowned the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2025 for his hauntingly beautiful image, ‘Ghost Town Visitor,’ a portrait that tells a multi-layered story of loss, resilience, and the silent, inexorable reclamation of the wild.
His winning entry, selected from a record-breaking 60,636 submissions from 113 countries, depicts an elusive and endangered brown hyena prowling through the spectral remains of Kolmanskop, an abandoned diamond mining town in the Namib Desert, creating an unforgettable piece of visual poetry.
The journey to this perfect frame was a decade-long odyssey.
After first noticing the paw prints and scat of the world’s rarest hyena in the ghost town, van den Heever conceived of a shot that would merge the animal with its haunting environment.
Realizing the nocturnal and solitary creatures were far too elusive to photograph in person, he turned to camera traps, embarking on a years-long battle with the elements.
He contended with punishing desert winds that buried his equipment in sand, the technical challenges of remote lighting, and the heartbreak of countless false triggers.
His unwavering dedication was finally rewarded when a camera trap captured the hyena in a moment of perfect serendipity: amid an ethereal fog rolling in from the Atlantic, the animal paused beside the skeletal ruins of a building, its gaze piercing the twilight.
“Can I say I was doing cartwheels?”, van den Heever recalled. “I was extremely, extremely happy, I couldn’t believe it.”
The power of the image lies in its profound narrative depth.
Competition judge Akanksha Sood Singh described it as an “eerie juxtaposition of the wild reclaiming human civilization,” a “multi-layered story of loss, resilience and the natural world’s silent triumph.”
For van den Heever, the photograph carries a simple yet powerful message about coexistence.
“Even in our cities and urban environments, nature finds its way to live alongside us, and coexistence is possible if we are willing to embrace it,” he says.
“That’s basically the story I’m trying to tell.”
Alongside this grand prize winner, other notable awards highlighted critical conservation issues, including Brazilian photographer Fernando Faciole’s Impact Award-winning ‘Orphan of the Road,’ a poignant image of an orphaned giant anteater, and Spanish photojournalist Javier Aznar González de Rueda’s portfolio on the complex human-rattlesnake relationship, which earned him the photojournalist award.
Yet, it is the ghostly hyena of Kolmanskop that stands as the definitive wildlife photograph of the year, a timeless testament to what can be achieved when art, patience, and a profound respect for nature converge.
