Thought Africa was just jungles and sand? Think again!

In our Weird Tourism series, we’ve visited some of the most unusual places, seen the strangest sights, and gawked at the most bizarre attractions of Europe and Asia. This time, we’re heading over to Africa.

When you think of Africa, you probably think of jungles or the Sahara Desert. And while both environments can be equally strange and wonderful, there’s so much more in Sahara that most of us have never heard of.

So, pack your bags, and let’s take a strange trip through the African continent.

1) Nay Palad Bird Nest — Laikipia, Kenya

Have you ever wanted to live like a bird? If you visit the Nay Palad Bird Nest in the Laikipia region of Kenya, you can.

Sitting in the heart of the Laikipia plains, this unique hotel is shaped like a bird’s nest. Designed for two people, there’s a comfortable bedroom, but it’s the roof deck — lined with enormous twigs — that really puts you in the perspective of a hatchling bird.

You’ll also be doing some good while you enjoy the surrounding Savannah. All the profits from the Bird Nest go the Zeitz Foundation, which works on land conservation and wildlife protection projects in the area.

2) The Big Pineapple — Bathurst, South Africa

Who lives in a pineapple in South Africa? It’s not SpongeBob, or anyone really, but the unimaginatively named Big Pineapple in Bathurst could easily house a person.

The Big Pineapple is officially recognized as the world’s largest pineapple. The three-story-tall building, built out of metal and fiberglass, pays homage to the Bathurst’s pineapple farming heritage.

Inside you’ll find a museum dedicated to pineapple, explaining the history of both the fruits and its farmers. You can also bring home souvenirs from the gift shop, which sells a wide variety of pineapple-themed products.

3) Deadvlei — Namibia

The name Deadvlei translates from Afrikaans to English as “dead marsh.” And once you get there, you understand how apt the name is.

Deadvlei is one of the eeriest places in the world. It’s so hot and dry that nothing lives there — there are only the dried skeletons of camel thorn trees that died possibly up to 700 years ago.

They’re not fossilized or anything. Deadvlei is simply so dry that no bacteria or micro-organism can survive there long enough to decompose the black-scorched trees.

4) Socotra Island — Indian Ocean

If you’ve ever wanted to visit a foreign planet, Socotra is about as close as you can get. The island, some 160 miles off the Horn of Africa, is famed for its bizarre and otherworldly nature.

Socotra has more than 700 species of plants and animals that don’t live anywhere else in the world. Some of the most famous endemic plants on the island are the mushroom-shaped dragon blood tree, the cucumber tree that’s almost all trunk, and the bulbous and pink-flowered Socotran Adenium obesum.

5) Voodoo Festival — Ouidah, Benin

Voodoo is these days associated mostly with Haiti, but it originates from Benin where it’s known as Vodoun. Some 80% of the nation’s population adheres to Vodoun, and the annual Ouidah Voodoo Festival is its largest religious gathering.

More than 10,000 people attend the ceremonies every year. Visitors are welcome to come witness and sometimes even participate in the traditional dances and animal sacrifices that aim to reach the divine.

You’ll also learn that real voodoo has little to do with the depictions of black magic and evil witchcraft you see in the movies. It’s a living, unique cultural tradition that you won’t find anywhere else.

6) White Desert — Egypt

The White Desert in central Egypt is home to some of the most bizarre rock formations on Earth. The pale white chalk monuments generally consist of a large chunk of rock, held aloft by a noticeably thinner stem.

The bizarre formations are the result of endless erosion. Blowing wind and sand have slowly scraped away rock at the bottom of the stone, resulting in strange shapes.

But it’s not just rocks that you’ll find in the desert. You might also run into some of the cutest critters in the world, like the fennec fox and the sand cat.

7) The Sword of Okomfo Anokye — Kumasi, Ghana

Eat your heart out, Sword in the Stone. King Arthur pulled it out eventually, but no one’s ever managed to remove this sword from the ground.

Okomfo Anokye was a 17th-century leader of the Ashanti people, who helped bring newfound prosperity to his empire. Local stories say that he once thrust his sword into the ground and declared it a symbol of peace and unity of the Ashanti that could never be removed.

The sword is still there, and it’s not like people haven’t tried pulling it out. For example, in 1994, Muhammad Ali tried his hand at yanking the sword out — to no avail.

8) Kolmanskop — Namibia

Kolmanskop is a human equivalent of the dead trees of Deadvlei. This aridity of the Namib desert has preserved this ghost town in pristine condition.

The town was founded in 1908 and became rich off of the area’s diamonds. But eventually, the gems ran out, and the last residents left Kolmanskop in 1956.

Now the sandblasted ruins of Kolmanskop sit empty. If you’d like to see what the Earth might look like after we’re all gone, this is the place to go.

Photographing landscapes is usually best done on a trip. Whether you go overseas or explore your home country, you will be able to find new and exciting destinations and vistas that you have never seen before.

A road trip is an even better chance to grab some new scenes. You will cover far more distance, which means opportunities abound. But when you’re on a tight schedule, there isn’t always time to capture all of the shots that you want by getting out of the vehicle and setting up the camera.

Instead, you may have to take shots while the vehicle is still moving. Here are some tips that you can use in order to get the best possible shots.

Use a fast shutter speed

This is step number one, and it almost goes without saying. Unless you want motion blur in your images to indicate that you were moving when you took them, which is a whole other thing, then you will want to freeze the landscape and capture it still. In essence, you want to make it as if you were standing still with your camera on a tripod when you took the shot.

This means grabbing the image as quickly as possible. You want as little light as possible to pass through the lens so that there isn’t enough time for the scene to become blurred. Of course, depending on the lighting conditions, this may be difficult. You can raise your ISO to compensate – and there’s always asking the driver to slow down just a little.

You may have to experiment in order to get the settings right – but do this regularly as you travel to check that you have the right set-up based on changing weather conditions and scenery. You never know when you’ll spot a view that you have to capture fast, before it’s gone.

Keep your eyes open

You must keep looking around you with your photographer’s eye firmly turned on if you want to get good results here. While you roll forward, the landscape around you can change quickly. You might also be affected by other vehicles and blockages such as road signs that might obscure your view.

It will probably happen more than once that you see a great shot, raise your camera, and realise you’ve missed that millisecond of opportunity. To avoid it happening even more frequently, be ready at all times. Have the camera switched on, lens cap off, and in your hands ready to go. This can be tiring over the course of a long drive, but the payoff is worth it!

Lower the window

You will want to get the window out of the way if you are going to capture a good shot – reflections, dirt and insects, and so on make for poor companions to your lens. Lower it out of the way – if you’re in a windy or otherwise unseasonable location, this may cause some sacrifice to your personal comfort, but ask yourself if it is worth it.

If you can’t lower the window – for example, if it’s jammed or you are on a train – then you can try to minimise the effects of what we have described. Make sure that your focal point is set manually so that you can focus past anything on the window and onto the landscape. Hopefully, this will blur out any marks on the glass (or at least enough so that you can Photoshop them out later).

You will want the weather to be mild with soft light to make this worth, as strong sunshine will make it a hell for reflections. You don’t want that to happen! Using a lens hood to shield the glare from the lens itself, and angling yourself in different directions against the direction of the light, can help to minimise it somewhat. You can even consider using black fabric – such as the black side of a reflector – to block the light behind you and keep your own reflection out of the frame.

There are ways in which the window can help you, however. When it’s raining, those drops sliding through the frame can actually add some atmosphere. It’s all down to how the frame looks when you compose and shoot, so work with what you have.

Learn to lean

Often, you will find that the most interesting view is the one right ahead of you. In places like Death Valley, where the black road stretching through the flat and arid land stands out, the road can be an interesting leading line in your composition.

This means you have to learn to lean. Put the window down, lean out, and take the shot before dropping back into your seat. There are some obvious safety warnings which we cannot leave out here:

• Only ever do this if there are no other vehicles on your side of the road
• Watch out for trees, road signs, and other items on your side of the road, and do not lean out if they are approaching
• Keep the camera on a strap and do not let go of it – however, it’s best not to wrap around your wrist or neck in case the camera is caught at high speed and wrenched away
• Look with your eyes, not just through the lens, for potential hazards
• Be as quick as possible and return to your seat immediately
• Ask the driver to focus on the road and ignore what you are doing – this would be a very bad moment to lose control of the vehicle
• Do not attempt this in a very fast-moving vehicle, such as a train, under any circumstances

You also need to learn to lean in another sense: in terms of shifting your perspective. To capture scenes from your passenger side window, you should be looking ahead a short distance for any interesting formations or landmarks that will pass by. Seeing them ahead of time means needing to envisage how they will look when you reach them, and understanding if you are looking at a good composition or not.

Be delete-happy

Don’t worry too much about setting up and capturing the perfect shot. In fact, because you are moving at speed, it’s a better idea to take as many shots as possible while you go. You can delete as many of them as you like later – even if you are left with just one in the end!

The idea is to shoot what you see, and then go back through everything with more of an editorial and critical eye later. If you spend lots of time setting up your shot in this setting, you will miss it every time. it’s better to shoot what you see on instinct, and then think about it later.

The good news is that the more you practice this kind of work, the better you will get at quickly framing and composing in your head within the required timeframe. It can actually be great training for working in other areas of photography, as you will have the ability to take a shot in a shorter period of time than other photographers would.

Depending on where you live, the opportunity for photography involving snow could be an everyday occurrence or, perhaps, a once-in-a-lifetime chance. When you find snow, don’t forget you can shoot great winter photographs with your DSLR camera by following a few simple tips.

Snow Photography Preparation Tips

Photographing objects in the snow has a lot of challenges, some of which you cannot prepare for ahead of time. After all, winter weather rarely proves predictable.

• Prepare for changes in lighting with the right accessories. The warm golden light at dawn, combined with the cold blue tones of snow, glows with an opalescent luster. (Alternatively, you could shoot at sunset for similarly dramatic images.) Plus, the snow will be relatively untouched by footprints if you get up early.
• Dress warmly and wear waterproof clothes. Buy “shooting gloves” (which double up as mittens and fingerless gloves), and don’t forget a hat.
• Keep your camera prepared, too. Keep your camera’s batteries fully charged and place your camera in a camera bag while moving around so that it doesn’t get too cold. When you get home, try to put your camera in the coolest part of the house and let it warm back up gradually to avoid condensation. You could invest in some silica bags if the temperature difference is a real problem. And check your camera’s operating manual for its operating range. Shooting too cold might damage the camera’s moving interior parts because the lubricants within motors have frozen.

Use the Correct Exposures

Brilliant white snow confuses your camera, leading to underexposed shots and snow that looks gray in the final image. Help your camera in one of these three ways.

1. Frame your shot, then focus. Then zoom in to a bright area of snow in the scene. Using your exposure compensation button, dial in a value between +2/3 to +1 2/3 EV, depending on the brightness of the snow. Take a meter reading, remember the settings, switch to manual, and dial in the new shutter speed and aperture. This overexposure will ensure that the snow looks white, but it won’t blow out other objects in the photo.
2. Check your settings. If any mid-tone objects (such as a gray rock or building) are visible in the scene, take a meter reading off of these. Changing your camera to these settings will then help it to render the snow correctly. You may have to dial in a little negative compensation (such as -1/3 EV) to stop the highlights in the snow from being blown out.
3. Correct exposure with a histogram. Take a test shot and check the histogram. If it is slightly “humped” in the middle, then just dial in a little positive compensation to add brightness. If the graph appears to fall off on the right-hand edge, then just dial in a little negative compensation to stop blown out highlights.

Dealing With Reflections

Using a lens hood when shooting photographs in the snow is vital. The flare caused by snow can make photos look very hazy. For much the same reason, you should avoid using flash, as it can bounce off the snow and cause overexposure. If it’s actually snowing while you’re shooting, the flash may turn snowflakes into distracting balls of overexposed light.

Think Creatively

White skies and snow-covered objects look eerie, particularly if you shoot them in black and white, so be creative with your snow photography. For example, look for interesting contrasts in colors. Red objects photographed against white snow always look strong but frame your photos carefully in this situation.
Less is often more, so don’t try to cram everything into one shot. Look for eye-catching trees, buildings, and other objects—then zoom in. Clean objects framed against a white background make for striking images. Use RAW format, so that you can easily make any tweaks needed in post-production.
The low light of the winter months casts long shadows on the ground, which are particularly stark in the snow. Use the shadows to lead the viewer into the image (Make sure that your own shadow isn’t visible in the final shot unless your shadow is the focal point of your photo.).

Experiment With Shutter Speeds

Use a tripod and a slow shutter speed when it’s snowing to cause a “streaking” effect in the image.
If the snow is blowing around in strong winds, though, you’ll need to use a faster shutter speed. If there’s no wind at all, you’ll probably need a slow shutter speed of around 1/15th of a second. Use a slower shutter speed to capture variants in the light, particularly at sunrise or sunset.