Photographer: Jason Moore
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This image was captured in the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania in 2022. It had been a bucket list destination for me for most of my life (I was in my mid -50's when I went there). It was one of the first photographs that I took when we arrived on the caldera floor, after a long, bumpy, dusty and freezing cold drive from our hotel (most of which was also in the darkness before sunrise). To describe this destination as dramatic would simply be an understatement, but hopefully the emotion of this image goes some way in portraying what I felt when I was there. The Crater is one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World, and it is truly a Garden of Eden in every sense. Although I had several modern mirrorless bodies with expensive prime lenses with me, I also took an old (2013) DSLR body with its original kit lens along for capturing snapshots of the family. Ironically, this is what I used for this image, and it remains one of my favourites from our trip (which included visits to 4 different National Parks including the Serengeti where we witnessed the Great Migration and wildebeest crossing the Mara River). Looking at the EXIF I can see I was in manual mode when the image was created, but I cannot explain why I used such a high shutter speed for a "still" landscape. Perhaps I had been shooting something moving moments before. Nevertheless, the noise isn't too bad at iso 400.
1/1000 • f/8 • ISO 400 • Sony A7rv • 55mm • Sony 18-135mm f3.5-5.6
