In the spirit of this week's assignment "Out of Place", I went to the local Zoo to capture some creatures that were certainly not in their correct place. I ended up with what I felt were two candidate images for this week's submission. I was having a difficult time deciding which to post, so I asked for some advice over in the critique forum. If you would like to see the other, here's the link:
This Colobus monkey did not look too happy lying there. When I stopped to photograph him, he just gave me this stare - as if to say "get me out of here, please".
This beautiful creature should be in its natural home. Unfortunately, so many habitats are being destroyed without thought for the indigenous species. A lovely picture but so sad.
Thanks everyone for the nice comments. I also received some advice in the critique forum to crop this a little closer, and I agree it does look better.
I should also note that one obstacle I had to overcome here was a wire fence between me and the monkey. You can see some of the vertical artifacts from the fence on the top of the monkey's head and elsewhere if you look. Thank goodness long lenses and shallow DOF make such things nearly disappear. However, thinking about this some more, having a faint image of the cage in the foreground could have actually added to the image.
I'll remove the hairs near the chain (thanks Mark), crop a little tighter, maybe tone down the saturation a little, and repost.
Hmmm, I need to calibrate at least one of my monitors. On the analog (VGA) monitor the colors look how I would like them. On the digital monitor (DVI), they look too saturated. Hopefully most of you are seeing what I see on the analog.
Colors look right on my monitor (maybe a tad oversaturated only on the yellow chain). The image is more compelling with the crop and elimination of the hairs. It's very powerful, nice job.
