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Walid Djebbar
@walidestinations
Best of the week 47 at #nomadict 2020
The globetrotter, that’s how people in my environment call me. However, it has not always been my nickname.
In summer 2013, I had an accident with my motorbike at the highway which resulted in 17 fractures and two years in the hospital. Before this accident, I was employed as a digital project engineer in a multinational and had never really had the opportunity to travel except in my home country.
"This accident was the trigger to create the life that I am living right now."
During these two years in the hospital, I decided that I would become a freelancer in order to have more freedom. And that is how I started traveling, first one country a year, then two… until, in the beginning of 2018, I decided to buy a one-way ticket. Since that moment I’ve been traveling the world and have set foot on 60 countries and all continents.
The first year of full time exploring the globe I partly traveled with two friends, Ludo @ludo_vix and Marc @md_tdh, and Marc is a photographer. Seeing my friend taking photos and having such a beautiful souvenir in which our best moments were captured awakened a desire within me to learn about photography too. Thus, I bought my first camera later in 2018 without knowing anything about the craft. And so my learning journey started; watching tutorials on the Internet and putting the lessons into practice immediately. Being constantly on the road was a huge advantage, so many places to explore and day after day there were new environments and landscapes to capture.
"This definitely set the foundation for where I’ve come so far."
I wish to inspire other people with my photos, whether that is to embark on a unique adventure big or small, or to simply share my passion for photography and where it has brought me. When you have the desire and the motivation, by giving yourself the means you can succeed in whatever you undertake, even your wildest dreams!
I try to convey this also through the editing of my photos, while remaining as close as possible to what I saw at the time of the shot. However, no device in the world will be able to show so precisely what you saw with your own eyes… And I think that is the most challenging to deal with in photography. I am delighted to be able to combine my work, my travels and photography nowadays. The latter allows me to make people who discover my photos feel what I myself felt at that time. Whether it is the amazement at the beauty of nature, or the emotions that the people I have photographed transmit by the look in their eyes and their body language.
"My accident and the consequences made me see that we are not obliged to get back into the “societal routine,” what in France we call, “metro, work, sleep.”
This is the path I was following before. Only two days off per week, five weeks of holiday per year and some bank holidays here and there… After discussing this subject with many people, I realized that we were extremely stuck in a routine that does not allow us to fully enjoy life. This is what I wanted to avoid, and decided to give myself the chance to live my life the way I wanted to. Work as a freelance, so that I can be my own boss and be able to work from anywhere on the planet, with a computer and an internet connection!
All the travels, and especially the people I encountered along my travels, had a huge impact on how I live my life now too. By living with the locals, I realized that in some countries poverty or the lack of means are quite present and that despite this, the inhabitants keep smiling and do not complain. There’s a moment of realization, a click, when you see how happy some are with nothing. It allows you to see that you’ve some self-work to do, and tell yourself that it is perhaps better, in life, to look at those who have less rather than those who have more and to put things into perspective. I learned to complain less and really realized that happiness mostly cannot be found in material goods, but mostly depends on human relationships and the people around us.
Simultaneously, these encounters also ended a big number of prejudices and biases I had, consciously or unconsciously. We are a huge mix of people and we can live with the whole world, no matter the religion, color, gender, or any other visible or invisible characteristic. Every single one of us is different – the categories created over time by society are just an illusion. When traveling, being curious, and being honest enough to yourself, you break the illusive barriers and a whole new world opens up for you. And at the same time, with that attitude, you can open up a whole new world for someone else.
I wouldn’t be able to choose one specific country that impacted me most, but if I had to say something, I can tell that Madagascar has a special place in my heart because of the kindness and hospitality of the people I was able to meet in the villages where I stopped. It’s about the third poorest country in the world, but the people are smiling, welcoming and generous. I loved being as close as possible to these people and children, whether in the villages or in orphanages. In addition, the beauty and diversity of the landscapes really filled me with awe, again and again.
Other than a country, if I had to choose one single experience it would be the one I had in the salt desert at Uyuni. The guide I was with had prepared a unique itinerary for us that was different from the one commonly used by tour operators. Our guide took us to a place where water is present all year round, allowing an extraordinary reflection. He took us there at 1am to admire the Milky Way… Can you imagine how breathtaking the reflection was? I have never been so impressed in my life! Having lived so many other unforgettable experiences afterwards, this one still remains the most unique.
Nevertheless, the winning photo resembles an amazing experience too. This shot was taken in Kirkjufell in Iceland. It is a fairly well-known mountain located in the northwest of the island. I had already had the opportunity to see the northern lights in Myvatn (in Iceland too) but the sky was really overcast making it hardly visible.
That night in Kirkjufell I was in my van watching a game on the computer before I decided to go out for a bit to take 2-3 night shots. I got out of the van, put my tripod down, set my shutter speed to 20 seconds and took my first photo. As I looked at the photo, I saw a thin green line in the sky. That meant that the aurora was coming! Five minutes later and the show began, a real parade in the sky! For at least 1,5 hours I was enjoying the dancing northern lights in the clear sky. A memory that will remain forever engraved in my memory!
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