Let Me Think About It

Interesting portrait Lucy, the body language and facial expression suggests he is in deep thought or is perhaps a bit troubled but I probably shouldn't "go there". I see a lot of saturated green showing up in the skin tones but also on the rock he's sitting on. The upper left corner shows some very odd color artifacts. Perhaps a combination of jpeg compression and a need to rethink the color balance in specific areas of the spectrum. The dark areas are pretty blocked up. I don't personally mind the non-essential areas to be lost in deep shadow, such as the groin area just as long as the image achieves its emotional goal, which I believe is revealed in the facial expression and body language.

I think it would help the critique process enormously if you could share some of the information on your equipment and settings with us. Providing this information probably isn't essential for EVERY photo and I know it can be a little bit time consuming to dig up the exif data, but it's the standard we want to aspire to generally speaking.

Thankyou Lucy,

Gary

Any artifacts are likely due to the fact, that I shot this through the plastic window of the enclosure. This was also taken handheld.

I love the body language you captured, but I'm not sold on the processing. Something looks a bit funky, or out of place maybe. That being such a distinct difference in contrast between the upper part of the monkey and the lower. It looks as if you have over-dodged the upper part to the point where it is too apparent. It doesn't look like your camera exposure captured enough detail in most of the monkey, so it may be simply what it is. With a better (or brighter) exposure to begin with (no clipping on the left side of your histogram), you should have plenty of detail to extract in all that blackness of hair and shape.

Gary offers great insight in how you can approach this capture. I think your subject offered a great pose. More eye detail would have made this much stronger. If this is not full frame, how about including fingertips on the bottom?