Aerial perspective of zebras

Another death-defying flight I took was in Kenya the first time I went to Africa in 1994. I captured this herd of zebras from an ultralight aircraft, which is essentially a large kite with a lawnmower engine attached and two tandem seats -- one for the pilot and one for the passenger. You don't even have the false security of an armrest! I was scared to death, needless to say, and it took about 5 minutes before I could even look down. Finally, I got up the courage and started shooting, and over time I relaxed a bit and began to appreciate what I was doing -- flying over Africa. I was shooting film, and the pilot wouldn't let me reload the camera while we were in the air because, he explained, the roll of film, if it slipped out of my hands and hit the propeller, might damage the blades and force us to land . . . possibly near lions. So, when I had finished my 20 shots (the Mamiya RZ 67, the medium format camera I used at the time, took 220 film which is equivalent to 20 images in the 6 x 7cm format), we landed, I changed film, and we were airborne again. For this image I used a 250mm lens, equivalent to about a 135mm lens in the full-frame digital format. The fastest shutter on the camera was 1/400 which is what I used for this image. I made the exposure with Fujichjrome Provia 100.