Ben Wilhelmi

Infrared photography on B/W film

somewhere near the Mara River, northern Serengeti. Shot a with a Rolleiflex 3.5F, (defunct) Kodak HIE aerography film, IR filter 89B

the famous Mara and the crossing. Notice the tiny dots on the opposite river bank: wildebeests.

 

lake Natron, deep yellow tones

aerial shooting in Tanzania, Katavi and more

the lovely katavi NP, SW Tanzania, here around the rainy seasons.

to spot animals from the air is always a pleasure, one never gets tired of it (except some creepy teenagers who prefer whatever game is fashionable and music player, I wanted to slap then so hard, to wake them up!)

late afternoon, low sunrays and long shadows

 

lonely trees near waterholes

 

 

Ngaresero gorge in the Rift valley, a splendid little gorge to fly deep in. Check on my Vimeo accounts for flying videos in there.

 

an extremely rare airstrip with a taxiway, Olpirakata. Not on the map as it is a typical unregistered Flying Medical Service airstrip.

Las Vegas, street photography

 

new Ford Mustang, convertible and not converted. So common to keep it closed nevertheless Las Vegas is hot. Even the dumbest moron notices that… I never got to understand. It’s like having a 4x4 and never going off roads (and that happens A LOT too), a girlfriend and not having sex, an ice cream and looking at it melting…

 

notice the “style” word up there? Well looking at the vendor on the right, there is a mismatch, no?

 

these girls would have fitted better for the style shop…

 

eco cops.

Lake Natron, jackson Pollock style, Tanzania

Arusha, Tanzania, B/W photography

Initially I thought to add weight in the cart was some kind of game to fool with a rookie pusher. Apparently it’s more about really in need of resting, alternating roles, and balancing the cart if need be.

 

like truckers all over the world, whether big lorries or minibuses or tuning cars, men (usually, as girls know better) like to paint something on their vehicle…even on those carts! Funny or pathetic? I’d say pathetic when significant sums of money are involved… here cheap paint to say ‘umeme’ which means electricity. Don’t ask, no idea why.

 

tramps begging on a sidewalk are not so numerous, curiously enough, considering the poverty level in Tanzania.

 

3 bags of rice or sugar. Only strapped by a coupla pieces of rubber, that much be unstable and wobbling along…

 

television carried with the glass part under of course.

 

dala dala passengers are usually packed like sardines. If not enough room, one or 2 can hang outside the minibus. Which is fun but dangerous of course. In my early volunteer years, I’ve done a few times but only on slow bits of roads, that is in town, not on roads between villages.

 

Flying clinics in the Tanzanian bush, B/W film photography

Rolleiflex 3.5F, a vintage beauty from 1961, still strong and fit, 6x6cm BW films

this place is Engoveroni, one the airstrips where Flying Medical Service operates, Rift Valley with a panorama on active volcano Oldoinyo Lengai. People are attending the clinics near the medical hut where the nurses do the job.

now watching Kerimasi past the Cessna 206, another volcano but extinct. The doctor is busy working under the wing.

 

below, Pininyi another location, on lake Natron.

street photography in Arusha

Monument valley, Arizona, B/W medium format film

Rolleiflex 3.5F

weather was initially pretty nice…

then a sand storm kicked in. It got quite impressive

some drawings in the Tanzanian bush

 

as usual while on a Flying Medical Service tour. I always try to keep a low profile when I draw oyherwise it can become a circus zone in no time depending on what I draw or paint. These sketches don’t seem to attract people, not even kids. Probably the B/W aspect that is of no interest to them because watercolors get their attention, big time.

street photography in Arusha

 

modernity and tradition clash everywhere in Arusha. The first time I got personally stuck by such a thought was in Istanbul many years ago when I noticed a brand new Mercedes stuck in traffic jam next to a cart pulled by a donkey. Here the girl, the appliances and the pathetic beer advert facing the kanga ladies is just an example out of many.

 

street hawkers, everywhere.

 

daily roadside market

 

on Sundays, most shops are closed so the sidewalks are squatted by various illegal vendors. I guess they bribe the cops to look somewhere else.

 

wananchi means citizen or comrade, some reminiscence from the Marxist years…sodas are all the rage in Tanzania. Ads are to be seen everywhere, soda companies are even offering road signs to announce a village. Coca Cola is leading the race as usual. Melinda Gates (Bill’s) said recently and loudly what many have been thinking for years as a joke by then but that many countries (and I add including Belgium) should be run by Coca Cola CEO’s. Not politically correct I know, and I praise her for that.

refill mission.

street sewing station. Nice location: people buy their pieces of cloth just next door and she tries to intercept them. That flowery dress reminds me of some old Belgian ladies when I was a child in the 70’s…luckily they won’t read this as they don’t need that kind of reminder.

Tanzania, aerial photography

burnt area, outside Ngorongoro Crater.

 

on a wet delta, SE lake natron, happy herders…

a Maasai homestead. The Cessna 206 is perfect bush aircraft. Just for photography, I wish the gear would be retractable, and those wing strut absent…here an example with a 12 mm lens, a bit extreme I agree

 

a school in the middle of apparently nowhere near Loliondo. Or why not in the middle of everywhere as I saw once on a motel in a remote place in Colorado.

 

Lake Natron, the one and only

 

well I’m pushing a bit I suppose as there are other salt lakes in the world, but I wonder if they are as rich in colors and patterns and changing coats so often?

 

flying 5 min overhead lake Natron, Tanzania

 

pictures, African bush

various locations in Tanzania over the years.

repairing a wall, spreading mud.

 

storyteller, very alive and interesting to watch.

 

 

 

a family posing in family. I’d bring them a print 2 weeks later, next flying clinic.

 

kids proudly posing in front of the blackboard. They were carrying the board to the school, that is under the big tree of the village.

 

a clinic in Oleparkashi, Rift valley. The doctor, the nurse, patients, the aircraft.

 

Lake Inle, Burma, B/W film photography

lake Inle is a beautiful inhabited in the Mountains, eastern Burma, Shan state.

because I also sport a crew haircut, they offered to freshen up. It would have been cool to share the experience but one single blade for everybody made me chill out…

 

a unique way to paddle: using one leg twisted around the gear. That allows the fisherman to stand up and look further for obstacles.

the lake is not deep, between 2 to 4 meters according to seasons. In turn people found it very convenient to build houses on stills and floating gardens held in places by long perches.

women, for some reasons, sit to paddle.

man working on a floating garden

aerial photography near Arusha, Tanzania

coming from the West, 10 minutes prior to landing, here is a landscape sample. Not bad he?

 

 

Grand Canyon, B/W film photography, medium format

shot on Rolleiflex 3.5F. Weather was awful though graphic.

Flying Medical Service clinics in northern Tanzania, B/W films

some years with Flying Medical Service mean various film cameras. Nikon F3 or FM2 below:

 

Leica M6 below:

 

and a Russian old camera, a Zorki 2 below, not much contrast, the lens is either old and ‘foggy’ or was not treated with modern coating. Maybe both, but it’s still worth trying for shooting the old way, and sweating sometimes;

Arusha, street business

 

 

Sundays, shops are mostly closed, less is reduced. This lady is not so much at risk to be run over. Grilled corn business.

cheap Chinese imports usually. Nothing exciting…

 

aerial shooting overhead lake Natron, Tanzania

 

Las Vegas, street life

shoppers’ dream come true.

 

a little drive in the bush near Arusha, Tanzania

Lengijave to be precise, 20 miles north of Arusha, then westbound into the bush. A nice thing about Arusha (classified in the “10 worst world cities” in Lonely Planet, for tourism purpose but still a bit, just a bit, excessive I’d say), is its location: close to the bush and parks and other mountains. Perfect though it used to be even better of course. Demography is skyrocketting and trashing the bush here too.

Tanzania, while on duty in the bush with Flying Medical service

Grand Canyon, Arizona

 

lake Natron, southern delta, aerial shots, Tanzania

a few rivers or springs feed the salty and brackish lake Natron. That is enough for local people to get their fresh water. But there will never be enough water to build a town there I guess. By the way this beautiful place was threatened by a soda factory plan. Luckily the investors, Tata from India, backed off due to various international lobbies and pressure. Not the Tanzanian government unfortunately which will try again to destroy the place as they’re doing now with the Serengeti highway Project…sigh…

Here are probably some green patches thriving thanks to a little spring.

Some trees surviving on the occasional flash floods running though that river bed.

 

Definitely a river and rivulets flowing towards the lake. notice the demarcation to the north.

 

 

but on reaching the lake, the salt kills any grass.

street photography, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

once in a while, I’m unfortunately trapped in Dar es Salaam. I’m definitely, for all its flaws, happy to live in Arusha. Off course the pictures below could be similarly shot in Arusha.

hot, humid, dirty, awful traffic jam, far from any interesting landscape or park…just the Indian Ocean and the proximity of Zanzibar can have a little appeal maybe.

 

nice squatting on a villa outside wall…

 

dreaming of being somewhere else…

 

street vendor in traffic jam.

 

Libya, Sahara desert, Um El Maa

 

April 2004, still on film, here Fujichrome, and Leica M6. This bit of Sahara desert will be a treat for the eyes, but before reaching the place, the same cannot be said…ugly roadside, derelict houses, unfinished buildings, blend colors…

 

at the same, there was a wild west feeling in some towns.

here one of our guides, packing up with cigarettes before hitting the desert.

 

an oasis but most of the water is brackish and salty, we tried but we couldn’t swim underwater, Dead Sea or here, same density in salt.

 

somebody made the mistake to bring flutes in the desert. I meant the chance of your life to enjoy utter perfect silence. Then spoilt by that awful noise, sad.

 

preparing the delicious bread in the evening, in the ashes spread on the sand. Funny enough the bread didn’t become gritty.

Flying Medical Service, portraits while on clinics

Sahara desert, Libya

 

lake Um El Ma (with tons of various spellings), a salt pond, nearly boiling water under 2 meter deep. Too hot to swim deep and impossible anyway as the density of salt is really high. Funny enough, vegetation grows on the shore and there is a clean water spring nearby.

shot on leica M6 and Fujichrome slidefilm.

not one rock to be seen in some areas.

 

a vendor from neighboring Mali.

 

oasis, so small in the surrounding vast expanses of sand dunes.

 

Italian motorbiker, part of a group camping nearby. Must be cool fun to ride across sand dunes like that. Except that one of the bikers flipped over and died under his machine the day before…