I was fortunate to visit Victoria Falls last week and tried to capture them in black and white. Photography can be really tricky because of the showers of mist: you are likely to get soaked and so is your camera! So I took along my waterproof Pentax WG 3 and carried my Olympus OMD in my backpack for safety. Fortunately the water levels in the Zambezi were fairly low and so shooting conditions weren’t bad. I managed to get the Olympus out (and stow it away) quickly between the waves of mist as they blew over. It’s a two hour walk through the mist forest park on the Zimbabwean side of the Falls and you make lots of stops at all of the viewpoints along the edge of the gorge.
The first and last pictures in the slideshow are of the Falls from a distance away. They’re taken from Elephant Hills hotel just after 5am on the days before and after my trip. You can easily see why they’re referred to as The Smoke That Thunders – Mosi-oa-Tunya.
At the start of your walk along the Falls is the imposing commemorative statue of David Livingstone. Then you work your way along the edge of the gorge opposite the sheer drop of the Falls. The Devil’s Cataract is a really impressive amphitheatre of mist forest. The Main Falls have huge streams of water separated by Livingstone Island. If you look back along the way you have come from Danger Point you see the mist billowing high up into the air above you. It’s quite an experience and something I hope I’ve managed to capture with this set of black and white pictures.
