The Sunrise with Elephant Story

I was leading a Kenya photo safari and as usual the days were long, full of unique encounters. It was the final dawn of the trip. As we drove out of the camp, I mentioned to my Kenyan friend/driver/guide Felix Wambugu, "We'd love to start the day just by getting a clean shot of a big sunrise, Felix." He said he knew just the place. My clients were at this point safari seasoned, and had their gear ready for whatever we might encounter. A few minutes toward our unknown destination, the vehicle suddenly stopped. Felix picked up his binoculars and for a moment scanned the horizon. "Do you want it with elephants?" he asked. Shocked by the option, without hesitation I replied an emphatic, "YES!" Felix laughed and told us to hold on. Our morning game drive abruptly morphed into a pedal-to-the-metal theme park ride, crashing over every bump in the fields as we raced toward our ephemeral goal. Every photographer knows a great image may only last seconds, as alignment of subject elements drift apart, the magic of a moment earlier gone. Our luck held. We arrived and for the next few minutes trained long telephoto lenses toward members of a small elephant herd on a distant crest. The timing was flawless. The sun hadn't even risen above the ridge line, so we watched and savored the selection of compositions as the fiery globe inched ever higher. The elephants had no idea they were subjects in a dozen viewfinders, creating art and memories for a handful of grateful observers. Many days on safaris begin with the splendor of a naked sun against an orange sky, but this day became something truly unique.

That day I created my keepsake image with a Nikon System 1 V1 camera, 400 mm f/2.8 lens and teleconverter resulting in a relative focal length of 1485 mm, which at the time was extraordinary. The challenge was the sensor of the V1 camera was a small 1" design, something new in the marketplace. It contributed to the extreme focal length I sought for the photograph, but also limited the size of the digital image file. In 2012 his translated to smaller print sizes. I would have not printed larger than 16x20 inches, not a tiny prin content Design high impact wall display either. But years later, advances in image processing software changed the game completely. I went back to my image archive and found the orig raw file (NEF) and reprocessed the photograph. Through the nuances of artificial intelligence, my small file could be extrapolated into a very large, high quality file suitable for the "WOW" image I had always hoped to hang. The print now graces visitors to my home as the show stopper centerpiece in a safari themed dining room.

A special morning in the Masai Mara helps fire my passion for photography every day.