𝐗𝐩𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 (/ˌɛkspɪˈdɪʃn/)
𝒏𝒐𝒖𝒏
1. 𝘢 𝘫𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘺 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘯 𝘣𝘺 𝘢𝘯 𝘟-𝘗𝘩𝘰𝘵𝘰𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘢 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘳 𝘱𝘶𝘳𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘦, 𝘦𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘭𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘵𝘰𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘩𝘪𝘤 𝘥𝘰𝘤𝘶𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯.
Photography by Dany Eid
Dany Eid is a Lebanese architectural and aerial photographer based in Dubai and a FUJIFILM Middle East X-Photographer. Working across the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the wider GCC, his work explores light, texture and form, capturing the character of architectural spaces and the stories behind them.
Ten kilometres inland from Lüderitz, on Namibia’s Atlantic coast, the desert has been moving into Kolmanskop for seventy years. Sand spills through windows, climbs staircases and settles across floorboards in rooms that once held a hospital, a ballroom and a theatre.
For Dany, an architectural photographer by trade, it’s a town he keeps coming back to. This time he brought the FUJIFILM GFX100 II and the GF30mm F5.6 T/S, and gave himself what Kolmanskop asks for most: time.
In 1908, railway worker Zacharias Lewala found a diamond while shovelling sand off the line. Within a few years the dunes held a German town with a hospital, ballroom, theatre, bowling alley, school and ice factory, all built in a place with no fresh water.
The boom ended as fast as it began. Richer fields turned up near Oranjemund, and the last residents left in 1954. The wind has been reclaiming the town ever since.
Kolmanskop looks effortless in photographs. Dany is the first to say it isn’t. Every room holds several frames, a doorway looking into another doorway, a beam across a sand drift, a staircase, and the light inside them changes within minutes.
So he worked the way he would on assignment: scout first, rank the rooms by how quickly their light disappears, decide the frame before the tripod goes down, and let some rooms wait for the next visit.
“A beam that hits a wall perfectly at 8:15 can be gone by 8:40.”
The sand curves and drifts while the doorframes hold their lines, and that contrast is what draws Dany here. He left the long lenses at home. The GF30mm F5.6 T/S, roughly 24mm in full-frame terms, lets him shift the frame up a wall without tipping the camera, so every vertical stays true.
The GFX100 II’s 102 megapixels hold the peeling paint and the ripples in the sand, and its dynamic range handles a blazing window beside a shaded room. Where medium format’s shallow depth of field ran out, he slowed down even further and stacked his focus.
Main body: GFX100 II
102MP for peeling plaster and sand ripples, with the dynamic range for a bright window beside a dark room.
Lens: GF30mm F5.6 T/S
About 24mm full-frame equivalent. Shift keeps verticals straight; tilt lays focus along a long floor.
Second body: GFX100
Kept ready alongside the GFX100 II.
Accessory: EVF-TL1
Tilts the viewfinder, so focus can be checked on a low tripod in a narrow room.
Every time he’s in Namibia, Dany goes back. Even in rooms he knows, a new drift or a different angle of light gives him something else to photograph.
Permits, a three-day shoot plan, staying safe in a decaying town and his tilt-shift checklist, all on his blog.
Instagram: @danyeid · Website: danyeidphotography.com
