Monday 22 March 2010

Ngorongoro: Walk to the Edge

 
Thank goodness for Photomatix Pro! The group went on a 6km walk a couple of nights ago, up above Ngorongoro Crater to an escarpment overlooking another massive lake. This is an area of Tanzania where pygmies still live. You can actually trek into the lake area (with a guide) and stay with them overnight, then go hunting in the daytime using bow and arrow.
To get to this vantage point we had to hire an armed park guide. The walk was through beautiful grasslands. We were shadowed by a group of Maasai boys - most of the time asking for school pens and other stuff. They are not really pushy but they don't go away either (nothing else to do I guess). The Nat park guy helps to keep them from getting too pesky, although the AK47 is there in case we run into Cape Bufalo. Or lion. Or cheetah. Or Rhino. Or Hyena.
Anyway, it was a great walk, but tough to make good pictures as we were walking into the sun. Setting the tripods up allowed us to shoot three bracketed frames and assemble them using Photomatix Pro - with a bit of fiddling this HDR software processes the data to give a far better tonal result than the straight shot you see at the top.

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