These are two white rhinos that came to drink at the waterhole in front of the overnight blind in South Africa. Unfortunately, I had to do extensive Photoshop "surgery" to make this scene like it was supposed to be. To protect the rhinos from poaching, once a year the managers of this private game reserve tranquilize the animals and cut their horns off. Horns grow back just like our finger nails do, but it's a tragedy that this has to happen, and it's a greater tragedy that people kill these magnificent animals to supply the Chinese aphrodisiac market. The removal of the horns isn't foolproof protection, though, because some rhinos are killed for the stump of a horn that's left. Pretty disgusting. The reserve hires armed rangers who protect the animals all during the night, but again, this isn't a guarantee that some animals won't be taken. There is a lot of land to guard. I didn't think I could recreate the horns in Photoshop, but I tried and the results turned out to be fairly good. Not perfect, but acceptable. My settings were 1/60, f/50, 10,000 ISO.
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