Baby harp seal

When I was still shooting film in the 90's, I visited the Magdalen Islands off the coast of Nova Scotia in Canada to photograph baby harp seals before they grew old enough and lost their beautiful white coat. It was the first time I was in severe cold -- minus 45 degrees Fahrenheit. I was taken by helicopter and we landed on pack ice where the seals were lounging about, apparently quite comfortable in the extreme cold. To get this shot, I laid on the ice in my orange expedition suit, eye level with the baby seal, and photographed the white on white scene with a 250mm lens (equivalent to a 135mm focal length in the full frame digital format). The babies allowed a close approach, and at one point I wanted to feel how soft they were. I took off my glove and touched one, but that was really stupid because 1) at this temperature, tactile sensation is basically lost and I couldn't even feel the fur, and 2) my hand hurt so much from exposure to the cold I had to run back to the helicopter, get inside to warm up again, and then resume shooting 20 minutes later. I determined the perfect exposure with a handheld Sekonic L-358 light meter. My settings were unrecorded, but they were probably 1/250, f/8, and I used Fujichrome Provia 100 slide film in a Mamiya RZ 67.