This was a very tough shot. I had spent the entire morning in northern Namibia looking for a crash of white rhinos, and as the sun rose higher in the sky I was becoming very disappointed. Finally, at around 11am, we found them. The lighting had become harsh, and in addition, they were gathered in a grove of dead trees with shadows from multiple branches creating unwanted patterns on the animals. I took this in the 90's with a medium format film camer. The 6x7cm transparency was scanned on a high end Imacon scanner. Even though this wasn't originally a digital image, I brought the scanned file into Adobe Camera Raw (in Photoshop: Filter > camera raw filter) and used the highlight and shadows sliders to minimize the contrast as much as I could. What I particularly like about this shot is the ground-level perspective. This was the first time in Africa I was able to get out of the vehicle and shoot from a low angle. A few minutes after I took this picture, the mother started pawing the ground in my direction and my guide said it was time to go. I took this with a Mamiya RZ 67 II, a 350mm lens, and my settings were probably 1/250 at f/5.6. I used Fujichrome Provia 100 slide film, and the image is uncropped.
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