Photos and the Reasons Why

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Taken on January 29, 2010 at 10.11am ICT
Camera: Nikon D300S
Exposure: 0.002 sec (1/640)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 200 mm
ISO Speed: 200

To continue the discussion from the past couple of photos, here is another zoo photo. This one was taken a little over a month ago at the Khao Kheow zoo in Thailand. This monkey is not one of the zoo exhibits, but he and his family run about eating the food visitors through to the animals, or, in this case, the Bamboo leaves.

Ostensibly, this should be a better photo than it is. People who look at it usually get a brief chuckle from his expression, and the colors are very nice. Everything is green and yellow to brown. The monkey is perfectly sharp and in focus and the background is nicely blurred. He has depth and is well framed.

Most importantly, we know the story here. This monkey is teasing us, and probably wants to be eating those leaves. It’s not the most interesting possible story, but it’s clean and unusual.

It has a couple of problems though. First, as I mentioned yesterday, the whites of his eyes are a dark brown. It’s naturally difficult for us to identify with him. The large brow ridge which shades his eyes does not help. If this were a studio photo or I had an assistant, I would have put a low angle bounce board below and to the left to reflect the sun back up. It would have filled out many of the harsher shadows and produced a much more even photo.

Next, and something I realistically could have corrected, the bamboo branch in the background is too high. If I had been able to get the branch out of the shot, we would be better able to look into those eyes, dark as they are.