I can almost sense that you have made a huge print of this one , this is so beautiful Ganesh. Perfect turn, the light, Rhino breathing and specially the processing is amazing. Great stuff.

The top light is ultimate.. i love...

I guess thats what you call best light . . fantastic.

great image Ganesh. The tonal range is nice. Composition wise a pano shot that excludes the water in the bottom seems a nice possibility for my taste. Additionally wish the rhino was a bit more healthy ( not in our hands ). The bones on the back are a bit distracting.

coming back to comment again, I do not think, I have ever seen a rhino image like this ever. Have seen a lot of Red Deer or even wolf images from Europe where the warm air due to heavy breathing gets so clearly visible, but a rhino ?? No sir, never imagined that . This is absolutely new stuff.

Nilanjan just said my words. I have not seen any image of an animal with warm breath from Indian region. This unique here. What liked in this image is the fine artistical background of distant defocussed trees. A cool wall hanger image.

Thanks Nilanjan, I definitely will make a 20x30 print of it. What frustrates me is the getting the details in shadow region right. On a calibrated monitor it looks just fine when I print it on a canvas or paper tones in shadow region have a tendency to go darker and accurate mapping of tonality becomes a tough job. I think I know the root cause of this problem - while my display and printer is very accurately calibrated I don't have a reference (calibrated) light to see the print ! The print will look different in different lighting conditions. I need to have a reference viewing light. Little bit of browsing to solve this issue led me to Solux 4700K print viewing solution. Hopefully I will be able to solve this never ending frustrating end-to-end calibration issues for good...Hmmm..

This image is enough to take ones breath away! I remember seeing an image with a Tiger in a similar setting in the winter of Bandhavgarh.
Absolutely love the play of light and the far off BG. Awesome yet again.

Awesome image Ganesh, Love the breath, beautifully processed sir.
I also like the trees, the dark and light areas in the background are really adding to the mood
Another shot could be including more of the trees and less(or no) water.

image is aw sum as illustrated by all here, I too haven't seen such thing with a rhino, yes i would like to know how the border (left & right) has gradually fades out the scene? was it the effect due to closer subjects? or a special setting in camera?.....

Mandavi, fading on left and right is due to the burning. Burning and dodging are typically done in B&W printing/processing to enhance the artistic appeal of the image (more so than for handling dynamic range better). You may want to check Nick Brandt's images for some inspirations - Nick Brandt's portfolio is here..

Extremely fine image, Ganesh! I particularly love the gently out of focus background, the accentuated ribs, the excellent black-and-white treatment and of course the puff of breath, that lends infinite uniqueness to this image. As always I'm curious to see the colour version as well, so I hope you'll share that sometime somewhere.

Initially I was undecided about the very bright patch of light right on top of the rhino's back and wondered how much more soothing the visual would have been without it but I now realise that it is precisely that element that makes the rhino look like a bronze or marble statue and lends a three-dimensional quality to it.

Thank you for kicking off the series and I hope to see many more such treats.

Just imagining a whole gallery with Solux 4700K lighting solutions installed one day, well, why not ?

i can smell warmth, ganesh, is all i can say.
sure, one of the finest from you. wonderfully controlled light, feel of the scape as well as soul of the beast.

tfs. regards.

What I liked very much about the image is its very apt focal length! Not too tight but not too wide... just perfect. Nevil has very rightly said - feel of the scape as well as soul of the beast is very well portrayed. Very difficult task it is to decide on the very right focal length and it takes a master to judge it so well. Thanks for sharing.