AMI VITALE: Vital Signs

I think you all met back in 2000.

When was it? Nine, maybe?

Good memory.

Yep.

Yeah.

I'd like to talk about that photo, which earned you some distinctions, rightfully so.

Not that that's what you were looking for, but what you felt.

Oh, no.

And funnily, it never did.

Photography is never about the photographer.

You know, the greatest joy is if you do have real impact.

And I've seen it and I've felt it throughout my career when One image can literally change people's thinking and not just thinking their actions.

And that that is one image.

It is.

I'll back up a little bit.

I, in 2009, heard about this plan to move for northern white rhinos from the Dvor Karlovy Zoo in the Czech Republic.

to Africa and when I first began I had never been working on wildlife stories and I started researching and was trying to understand why they would be flying for rhinoceroses across the planet and what I discovered kind of blew my mind in my world and I went and met these really hulking beautiful creatures in this zoo.

And when I first set eyes on them, the first thing that struck me was how ancient they look.

I mean, they look prehistoric.

You feel like you're in the presence of a dinosaur.

And something about that moment just quite unexpectedly changed my world forever.

And what surprised me the most was this sort of wonder that I felt in the midst of this Ancient species? Yeah, I don't even...

I become speechless when I think about it.

I felt like the closest thing I can think of is just like meeting a unicorn, this sort of mythical creature in front of me.

And the reason I felt like I was meeting a unicorn because... is because on that day, there were actually only eight of an entire species of rhino known to be alive on the planet.