Taking advantage of our pandemic-found ability to host speakers from the wider world, we are delighted to welcome Scott Hurd to speak about his life as a professional photographer in Namibia. This will be hosted on Zoom at The Brentham Club.

Biog:

With retirement approaching, Scott walked away from his lucrative business as a motivational speaker and, using his own techniques, reinvented himself.

He set up a new life in Otjiwarongo, a small town in the African bush - a totally different world - in order to work with his first love, photography. The open spaces, wildlife and people were what initially drew him to Namibia. He had expected to be involved in mainly Lodge and Hotel publicity work, to have the occasional wedding or baby shoot and maybe to sell a few photos, but, as one of the few photographers in the country at the time, he completely failed to anticipate the diverse and fascinating work that flooded in.

As a professional photographer in Namibia, he never knows what the next phone call will bring. He could be training anti-poaching units out in the bush, photographing aged freedom fighters or shooting a President. He could be camped out in the desert doing ID photos of Wild Horses, covering a big tribal wedding or working with rescued pangolins. One of his most unexpected and exciting projects has been to document the construction of a brand new mine, from virgin bush to the first gold bar.

His knowledge of African wildlife has enabled his images to spearhead major conservation campaigns and be used in publications worldwide. This is what his talks, from the edge of the oldest desert in world, are based on.

The content of Scott's presentations is as diverse as the Namibian people, the wildlife and the land itself. As a born story-teller, he talks lovingly of a land that fast became his home, a land where camera technique has to adapt to very different, sometimes arduous and often extreme conditions. This is an Africa that visitors can only guess at.