A monster croc

The most frightened I've ever been in photographing wildlife was the time I captured this Nile crocodile in Kenya. My photo tour group and I had stopped for breakfast in the Masai Mara and we were allowed out of the car at this designated place. The Mara River ran past the plateau where the cars were parked, and there were crocs below us. To get an eye-level shot -- much more dramatic than shooting down from a height -- I walked down a bank to the water's edge and spotted this monster watching me. I estimate that the distance between us was about 50 feet, and I used a 500mm plus a 1.4x teleconverter, giving me 700mm of focal length, to fill the frame with the reptile's fly-covered head. The croc was about 18 to 20 feet in length, but what really blew me away was its width. It had to have been 5 or 6 feet wide! My guide said he was probably 2000 pounds. I looked behind me and planned my getaway should the croc move a muscle, but I was able to get a couple of pictures before the tension and the fear got the best of me and I quickly climbed up the river bank to safety. My settings were 1/1250, f/5.6, 320 ISO, and I used a tripod. I shot this in 2007 with my first serious digital camera, the Canon 1Ds Mark II.