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benoitrimet

B-Monkey

Canon EOS 500D

settings

Aperture f/5.6 ISO 800 Shutter 1/200 Focal Length 300/1

location

Kerala, IN

upload_date

Jul, 2021

Views

192

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Behind The Lens

Location

I made this photograph by the Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary in Kerala during my travels in India. Monkeys are one of the animals which are freely living close to the communities where they can get or steal food and things from people more easily.

Time

Funny enough we did not even visit the sanctuary. We had driven all day from our previous place and reach the sanctuary around mid afternoon. Unfortunately it was too late to get tickets. So we just walked closeby and these monkeys were there, sitting on a wall.

Lighting

The light is a soft bathing light and I like how it supports the monkey himself who is very young with very soft hair and big eyes. Feels like a baby in a cocoon.

Equipment

I used a canon 500D with a 70-300mm lens. While it probably would have worked with a 50mm portrait lens, using a zoom felt safer and less disruptive of the animals. I like how it also blurs the background so the subject stands out even though the aperture is not that low which is what you would get with the 50mm lens from canon.

Inspiration

Life. I mean there were a lot of monkeys that day, but there was something special about that baby and his protective mother. Something more tender, more familiar to a human feeling I could identify myself to. I observed them for some time and one picture leading to another here we are.

Editing

Originally I shot this photograph in color and it was also including the mother in the frame. Later in Lightroom I realized cropping it and turning it into black and white would make it a much more powerful image.

In my camera bag

When I do some unplanned photography I always take lenses that would cover almost any kind of situation as I never know what I will find, especially in street photography. I like to have my options open. That would include a fisheye, a 24-70mm, and a 70-300mm. I add the tripod to the list and remove the 70-300mm when I know there will be more landscape photography opportunities. On top of it I always have 2 batteries with me and a couple of memory cards.

Feedback

Go out there, travel, explore, and try. It is hard to work with animals as they will never do what you want when you want so be ready and don't hesitate to rethink tiny details of your composition at post processing if that helps. It is better to photograph a moment in a slightly larger frame and reframe it later than waiting for it to happen in the ideal frame/condition and miss that moment completely. Being precise and plan for things is good but with animals you better be ready for the unexpected.

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B-Monkey

Behind The Lens

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