Victoria Falls at Sunrise

I took this photo several years ago when I was visiting Victoria Falls (on the Zambezi River in Africa between Zimbabwe and Zambia) on honeymoon with my wife. It was taken with a 35mm film camera (remember those??) - the digital version here was scanned from a 6x4" print on a flat-bed scanner

Whilst visiting Vic Falls, I (obviously) took quite a few photos (not as many as I probably would in these days of digital, of course) but most of the were what you might call "record" shots - I don't know if it is because I had seen so many other photos of the Falls in the past (I used to live in Zimbabwe), but I was finding it difficult to feel inspired about capturing something that I felt was at all interesting or that captured anything of the feel of the place.

In the end, based on the well known fact that the light makes or breaks landscape photos, I decided that the best plan would be to try to get a shot at sunrise (sunset, which would have been easier, didn't really work because the light direction didn't seem to be working).

I have to admit that it was a bit of a challenge to drag myself and my wife out of our nice warm bed early enough to get there in time, but the light (and, actually, the whole experience) was absolutely fantastic - if you are ever anywhere like that, then I strongly recommend making the effort to get up and see the sunrise. Not only did I get some photos that were much more interesting that the others I had taken, but also a memory that both of us treasure - and one that we would have missed if it weren't for that desire to get out there and capture that more interesting photo.

In terms of technique, by the way, there wasn't really anything difficult about this shot - I'm reasonably sure that I used my tripod, and I determined the exposure to use by taking spot readings from the dark and light areas on the scene and then choosing an overall exposure that I thought would give a reasonable overall exposure.