Long-Tailed Macaque
by Ashley Vincent
Canon EOS 7D, EF 500mm f/4L IS USM + 1.4x TC @ 700mm, Aperture Priority @ f/8 (1/1000 sec), -1/3 EV, ISO 640, Cropped About 15% from Full Frame
Subject: Long-Tailed Macaque
Location: Kinabatangan River, Sukau, Sabah, Malaysian Borneo
Situation: Gliding down one of the tributaries of the main river, we came upon a troop of Macaques who, by the looks of things, were preparing to cross over to the other side. On my previous trip I saw Proboscis Monkeys doing the same, but they did so by leaping from treetops on one side to the other; these guys though had a completely different approach in mind: swimming!
The distance between banks was not all that great, although I was still taken aback a little by seeing mothers diving in and swimming the divide with their babies totally submerged, all the while clinging tightly to their mum's stomachs. Although judging by the speed with which each Macaque got itself out of the water I'd say getting wet isn't one of their favourite pastimes (though the speed might also have had something to do with recollections of bad experiences with crocs in the past!), all the same, none seemed over perturbed by it, least of all the babies who one might have thought would feel the sudden change of environment a real shock to their senses, which wasn't the case at all.
Despite being able to capture quite a number of images from this encounter, we had unfortunately drifted a little too close, and each individual's crossing happened with such speed that there was no time for me to detach the 1.4x TC, which left all too many shots with one part of a limb or tail sliced out of the frame when the subject was moving, so the best of the series were taken once a subject had emerged and settled down. Hope you like this one.
BTW, something in the compression process from the full-sized PSD image turned the background kinda' strange as you'll surely note here, in the larger size it's still there but far less noticeable, so you might wanna' take a look at that ;^)
Thoughts, comments, and suggestions always welcome :^)
Comments
11 commentsAs for the background, you have some "posterization" going on (the banding of flat background). You can check out this page (it has a few tips) http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/posterization.htm and definitely check in the NP forums. I wish I remembered how to fix it, but it's a long time since I had it.
As you say much less noticeable in the LP.
Don't know how/what you did PP to produce it. But it will show up in backgrounds because of their inherent repeating patterns.
I do love the comp and tender moment here. Great detail/DOF and the water drops I see falling add nicely..
Good work!
Do agree about the banding effect in the background...
Esme': Thanks for linking me up with that detailed information about posterization.
Despite me having read the article a couple of times now (technical info is generally difficult for me to digest at the best of times!), I'm still not completely sure I understand what created this effect and, going by the much lesser degree of posterization in the larger version (file size: 467kb, as opposed to 299kb in the smaller one) as well as the fact that it's not noticeable at all in the PSD file I saved it as after processing (82.8 MB ... Wow! Wasn't even aware of how large this file actually is on disk 'til I just looked!!!) or the in the picture I've already printed, my thinking is still that this effect was created while compressing the image to JPEG's.
I'm still amazed at how large that PSD file is, especially seeing as I really didn't have to do much in post processing and the crop (whether or not that has anything to do with this) was pretty minimal.
I like the image, but I too am especially amazed by your accounting of the behavior! With the background story the dripping wet countenance becomes even more meaningful. Thanks!
For the record, I did in fact resize ( or rather, crop) the image before working on it in PS and not after I saved it as a JPEG, so I don't think it was that, but thanks for giving it some thought.