Tuesday 24 February 2015

A Short Walk up the Blue Nile

It was not the best time to shoot rushing waters of the Blue Nile - but we didn't have much of a choice.  We flew into Bahir Dar from Addis at 9am and after a bone-shattering hour on a dirt road arrived at the falls national park.  As is often the case in these places we took on a local guide who was handy for carrying tripods but not a lot else.  Waterfalls don't require a lot of explaining.  Being the dry season very little water was going over the drop - local authorities built a hydro station round the corner that consumes most of the flow headed for the waterfall - but we were lucky in that the generating plant had broken down the week before so the flow was quite impressive.  From here the Blue Nile flows some 5200kms to Alexandria. 

To get the smoke like effect I used an ND 64 filter (which turns the image in the viewfinder almost black) this produced a 4 second exposure and a nice smooth water effect.  While it sounds like the ideal solution, using the ND64 is hard because it's so dark you simply cannot clearly see if the image is in focus or not...

Here's the group crossing a thin suspension bridge next to the Blue Nile falls
Small local boat acting as a ferry to get across the relatively smooth waters of the Blue Nile

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