Black Rhino Reflection (Mirror Mirror) – Estosha National Park, Namibia – Denis Roschlau

Denis has captured a beautiful moment of a wild black rhino drinking at night. The full reflection in the pool of water really makes the image. Please read her story below and then visit here portfolio here http://www.leveloff.de/#/0 and here http://500px.com/DenisRoschlau You can also like her on her Facebook page “Wildlife Addicts” http://www.facebook.com/WildlifeAddicts .

Enjoy!

Enter Denis:

I took this shot on a trip through Namibia, last year in October. We spent a week in Etosha NP and this photo was taken on our last evening in the Park, at the Halali Camp.  This Camp features it´s own waterhole, accessible 24hrs and has a viewing deck just a short walk away from the Campsites.  So it was an easy decision to leave our noisy neighbors behind and spent the evening at the waterhole, waiting for things to come. We arrived to find this black Rhino lying next to the water, resting.  Lighting conditions as well as the underground of the deck were a bit difficult, so i was glad i brought my Apex Bean bag along, to rest the Nikon 200-400mm lens attached to my trusted D3 upon.  Just when i finished setting up equipment and dialed in the proper settings for this night shooting, the Rhino got up to get a drink.   Luckily enough it moved very slowly and more or less froze during drinking, so i could get a couple of clear shots, including the one you are looking at right now.  Thanks to the Rhino being a careful drinker, there were just enough distortions in the water to get a nice mirror like reflection.   I converted the image to black in Lightroom and white due to the unnatural artificial lights at the waterhole and to highlight the contrasts in the motive.

The whole scene was captured with the following equipment and settings:

Nikon 200-400 f4 @f4

Nikon D3 @ ISO 3200, 1/5s

Resting on an Apex Bean Bag.

I hope this Rhino is still going strong somewhere in Etosha, let´s hope that 2013 will see way less poached Rhinos (and other animals, of course) in southern Africa than in the years before.

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