The photo was taken in Ethiopia, in the Simien Mountain National Park in 2022, when it was still possible to access it. Unfortunately, this region is now inaccessible due to the ongoing local war. We reached the location after about 20 minutes of trekking uphill on the path that allows the view of Jimbar’s Great Waterfall, and I noticed that some vultures were circling above.
I saw that Ruppel’s vultures (which is an endemic species of this region) were flying over the waterfall, so I decided to use a 100-400 zoom to aim at the vultures in flight and progressively tighten the focal length to about 300-350 mm, following them, and then take the burst as they passed over the waterfall. I purposely underexposed to darken the background part, so that the white water and the vulture stand out, which was good because of the incident light above (these photos only work if there is sun).
Post-production was almost non-existent, in this photo no complicated interventions were needed, cropping and closing the shadows, adjusting the white balance to give it a colder tone, and luminosity mask on the vulture, to perfectly adjust the lights and shadows.
