Heinrich van den Berg

South African based photographer, Heinrich van den Berg specializes in nature, environmental and travel photography. He has spent many years in the field, capturing images of African wildlife and the natural beauty of the continent.
Highly acclaimed as a wildlife and nature photographer, he has won various international photographic awards. He was the first photographer to win the Eric Hoskings Award of the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year for two consecutive years (also known as the Shell or Veolia Wildlife Photographer of the Year). He has also won the international Camel Trophy Photographic Competition, and was one of the official international photographers for the Camel Trophy in 1998. Additionally he was the overall winner of the international Fuji Getaway Photographer of the Year award in 2005. His photographs grace numerous books, calendars, magazine portfolios and photographic products worldwide.
In 1998 Van den Berg left his profession as a civil engineer to become a full-time wildlife photographer. Since then he has travelled the world photographing wildlife, culture and adventure sport with a uniquely artistic eye. In his bid to 'tell a story in every picture', he has climbed icy volcanoes in Argentina and Chile, tracked endangered mountain gorillas in Rwanda, searched for rare chameleons in Madagascar, wandered through the sacred temples of Cambodia, and walked the steamy forests of Borneo and Sumatra to photograph the elusive orangutan. He has photographed extensively in Southern Africa, where he lives, capturing on film the elusive leopard in Kruger National Park, the desert elephant in Namibia’s Kaokoland, and the captivating birdlife of Botswana. Van den Berg’s photographs are known for breaking boundaries and depicting the natural world in a fresh and evocative way.
Although he specializes in environmental photography, Van den Berg has a gift for photographing the charm and idiosyncrasies of people in their natural environment. He is an experimental photographer always on the lookout to capture his subjects from a unique perspective.
Van den Berg has done photography for GEO, Terra, GQ, The Peaceparks Foundation, bhp billiton, National Geographic Books and Discovery Communications. Assignment photography done for Discovery’s Animal Planet includes still images for the Meerkat Manor and Wild Recon series.
Apart from his photographic skills, which cover both analog and digital media, he is experienced in the field of publishing, having photographed and published 19 highly acclaimed photographic books. To ensure that the quality of images is maintained from the field to the printed page, Van den Berg is intimately involved with the reproduction and printing process – from the colour correction to the design and final production of his sought-after wildlife books. He is the founder of the publishing company HPH Publishing.