Sleepy Heads I

Gallery: WildlifePosted June 23, 201173 views5 comments

Canon EOS 7D, EF 500mm f/4L IS USM, Aperture Priority @ f/5.6 (1/400 sec), 0 EV, ISO 3200, Tripod, JPEG from RAW, Full Frame

Subject: Brown Lemur

There are two species of Malagasy Lemurs at my local zoo, the Ring-Tailed Lemur – that I've posted photos of before – and these Brown Lemurs. For some reason the Ring-Tailed are far more active that the Brown Lemurs who seem to spend most of their day sleeping, which makes them a challenging subject to photograph, in fact, for all the times I've visited them I've only really had a couple of opportunities to capture shots of them, and both times they were either just waking from a nap or just about to fall back into another … which always seemed to happen only moments after they'd awoken from the last one.

Still, these brief moments were enough for me fire off a few frames that I'm quite pleased with, and this is the first I'll show you of my three favourites.

Critique and comments always welcome :^)

Comments

5 comments

Comment posted by John Tobias on June 23, 2011 at 9:45 AM

Nice shot of these brown lemurs. I don't know much about them, but I think one reason you find the ringtail lemurs more active is that they are as I understand the most ground dwelling of all the lemurs and spend a good amount of their time foraging on the ground, or sunning. Thanks for sharing.

Registered on September 12, 2009, 2120 Posts, 6455 Comments

Comment posted by Mark Seaver on June 23, 2011 at 10:51 AM

The eyes are so dramatic in an image that is very monochromatic. The glories of natural camouflage. I like your composition.

Registered on January 23, 2011, 1103 Posts, 17270 Comments

Comment posted by Ashley Vincent on June 25, 2011 at 3:51 AM

Thanks for taking the time to view and offer comments John and Mark :^)

John: You could well be right my friend :^)

Registered on March 1, 2011, 154 Posts, 2083 Comments

Comment posted by Brad Hill on June 25, 2011 at 4:27 PM

Hi Ashley,

Captivating eyes - no doubt! To me this image is primarily about the facial region and mostly these great eyes, so...pity that the tail was hanging down the way it was - including it (which was probably the only thing you could do) drove what otherwise looks to me to be a natural horizontal composition into a vertical one, and forced you to clip the one lemur and almost clip the other (which, I suppose, is one way of saying "I wish there was more room on the sides"!). The vertical composition also forced you to include a lot more rock below the subjects than really needed and keeps you (in our pixel limited NPN world) from really emphasizing the head/eyes the way you could if your 720 (or 1200) pixel limit could be have been used horizontally.

Don't take this to mean I think you did anything wrong here - I don't think cutting off the tail (figuratilvely

) was an option, but being forced to include it really limited your options. Next time these guys are awake you should talk to them about their responsibilities as photographic models!!

Thanks for sharing this one...

Cheers...

Brad

Registered on May 29, 2007, 431 Posts, 6061 Comments

Comment posted by Ashley Vincent on June 25, 2011 at 9:56 PM

Thanks for your feedback Brad :^)

This is one of the things I really appreciate about sharing my images on the NPN: the observations of others can get me to see things in my work that offer a completely different perspective to the only one I seemed able to perceive until that point. Until now I've always thought the hanging tail added a lot to the overall appeal of this image, close to the edge of the frame as it is. But reading your thoughts makes me realise that by far the biggest draw is of course the heads and eyes, and had that tail been nicely curled up I would certainly have flipped the camera and gone landscape, which would indeed have made for a more pleasing image than this.

Ah well, gives me something to visualise and be ready for next time I'm up there ;^)

Registered on March 1, 2011, 154 Posts, 2083 Comments