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Carola is a three-year-old woolly monkey that has survived Amazonian hunters and thrived at recovering to return to the jungle....
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Carola is a three-year-old woolly monkey that has survived Amazonian hunters and thrived at recovering to return to the jungle.
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Oct, 2016Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
I took this photo at the indigenous community of Mocagua in the Amazon jungle.Time
I was working as an interpreter for eco-tours through the jungle for various lodges and travel agencies. The daytime visits to Mocagua were often my favourite since the locals' relationship with primates is more intimate than elsewhere in the jungle. After a few hours of safari shots riding up the Amazon river in the morning, we would hike through the jungle for about an hour and reach the spot where this shot was taken at about 11am, which gave us a good hour of monkey filled magic before moving on to have lunch.Lighting
Most shots taken in the jungle are underlit because of the dense canopy. This was no exception and I did not have my external flash at the moment. However, it is one thing to use a flash to capture plants or insects but quite another to disturb wild animals with it, which I always avoided, so this shot was difficult to take given the amount of movement going on while taking a slow capture.Equipment
This was shot with a Canon 70D and an 18-55mm f/3.5 lens.Inspiration
This particular monkey (Carola) was usually relaxed and straightfaced so as soon as her eyes began to widen I knew there would soon be more expression in her face that I simply could not miss out on immortalising.Editing
I gently adjusted the light levels while leaving the colours untouched.In my camera bag
Besides my Canon 70D and my 18-55mm lens I would usually carry a 70-200mm lens with me but I did not have it with me at the time I took this shot because I often chose to carry books in my bag instead so there was no room for it and switching lenses in the middle of the jungle with monkeys playing around is not always the best idea.Feedback
In the jungle, action (excessive movement) always comes first and stillness follows, leaving a short window of opportunity for getting the camera ready for shooting. This means that one must be willing to compromise many incredible shots and be patient enough to wait for that breezy moment when the lens can take over the forefront of the senses. I would also recomment a more luminous lens such as a 50mm f/1.8 given the general underlit conditions of the rainforest.
