Tom Varley

Tom Varley was raised in the Zimbabwean bush with a professional guide for a father and has lived in Victoria Falls since he was ten. He started on the river, as a safety kayaker and raft guide on the Zambezi, and had his learner guide's licence at sixteen. A spell in the British Army doing aerial and ground reconnaissance photography in the Balkans turned a hobby into a trade, and when he came back to the falls in 2002 he moved from rafting footage into wildlife and landscape work.

Since 2008 he and his wife Etty have run Vic Falls Productions, the fixing, guiding and camera company that international crews call when they want to film in Zimbabwe, Zambia or Botswana. His credits run from the BBC's Life of Mammals and Earth's Greatest Rivers (the Zambezi episode), through Netflix's Our Planet and Night on Earth and Apple's Earth at Night in Colour, to The Grand Tour's Zimbabwe special and the slacklining stunt across the gorge for Gillette World Sport. His coffee-table book, The Magnificent Victoria Falls, is sold in the town's bookshops.

For visitors rather than film crews, the same knowledge comes out as guided photography: the falls at sunrise from the Zimbabwe side, the Zambian lip in low water, the river at dusk, the night sky over the bush. He also photographs weddings, engagements and family celebrations at the falls, which is how a lot of people first find him.

A photography outing is built around the light, not the clock. Sunrise means being at the falls before the gates are busy, with the sun behind you and the rainbow forming in the spray; a river session means a boat on the upper Zambezi with the hippo channels and the islands in the last hour of the day. Between the two there is time for the gorge, the bridge and the baobabs. Bring your own camera or your phone; the point is where you stand and when, and Tom will tell you both.