Perfect storm

Every African safari is unique. You can go to Africa 20 times, and each game drive offers something different compared to the last one. I photographed this one week old giraffe calf nursing in amazing afternoon lighting with an approaching storm -- the best combination of elements possible -- on my first safari to Kenya in 1994, and I've never seen anything like it since. In two dozen trips to Africa, I've photographed a lot of wonder things, but I witnessed this particular kind of scene -- which is utter perfection -- only once. I was still shooting film at that time, and this compounded the difficulty in capturing great images because the camera was entirely manual -- manual focus, manual exposure, and manual film advance. That's why I was so thrilled with this. I used a Mamiya RZ 67, a 250mm telephoto, and my settings were 1/250, f/5.6, and I shot with Fujichrome Provia 100 transparency film. The slide was scanned by an Imacon Scanner to create the digital file. After I took this picture, the calf ran over to my vehicle, studied us for a few seconds from about 15 feet, trying to figure out what kind of creature we were, and then it bounded back to its mother.