Orangutan
by Ashley Vincent
Canon EOS 7D, EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM, Aperture Priority @ f/5.6 (1/320 sec), ISO 640, Handheld, JPG from RAW
Last November I was fortunate enough to spend 12 days in Sabah, Borneo. In retrospect, I should waited at least another three if not six months before making this somewhat expensive trip, for the simple reason I'd had just less than a month to practice with my new camera and lenses and, looking at all the images I came back with now, it's plain to see that for the most part my photographic skills were in no way equal to the quality of my equipment.
That being said, much like anything else, the more shots you take the greater the chances are of at least one or two hitting the mark, and seeing as I came back with around 2,500 images I do have at least a few I'm relatively pleased with ;^)
While putting this trip together, I was pretty insistent with the tour company I booked through that I only wanted to take photos of birds and animals in the wild, however, they managed to talk me into one semi-wild setting in line with the fact that the alternative to not visiting this place would have been spending a couple of hours twiddling my thumbs while sitting on the end of a pier waiting for my transportation up river to arrive.
So there I was on my first day at Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre and, ironically, captured some of the best images of the whole trip. It was fortunate for another reason, in that for the duration of my time in Sabah I only had one sighting of an Orangutan in the wild and it was too far off to getting anything close to a good photo.
Generally visitors to Sepilock only get to see the Orangutans for about an hour while they're being fed fruit on a wooden viewing platform, which of course is not really the most conducive setting if you're trying to shoot a photo that, at the very least, omits anything manmade-looking from the frame.
Another stroke of luck I had was coming across the Orangutan pictured above as my guide and I were walking toward the main feeding area. I managed to fire off a number of shots before a park ranger appeared and shooed it away; apparently this one had wandered off and the rangers had been looking for it.
Anyhow, of the short series of shots I managed to fire off, this is one of my favourites, for the way the Orangutan appears to be looking and, to my mind, thinking, “If I time this just right I can be out of here before anyone's the wiser …. ” ;^)
PP: Cropped about 10-15% off the top and RHS to give a more pleasing composition to my eye. Cleaned up the fur a little by removing bits and pieces of dirt and soil. Nothing really more than that other than the basics.
Happy as I am with this image I'm more than open to reading your thoughts, opinions and possibly suggestions on how I might have been able to make this picture even better :^)
Kind regards,
Ashley
Comments
8 commentsI love the pose and pensive mood you've captured here. Lighting/exposure seems to have been well handled. I might consider toning down overall highlights just a tad here?
Must've been nice spending time with these gentle giants!
Thanks for taking the time to view and comment on my image :^)
Good point re the highlights, something I will tone down a bit before I print this up ;^)
Already spent some time looking through the wonderful images on your website BTW, which have me looking all the more forward to my upcoming trip to SA later this year :^)
All the best,
Ashley
The great thing for me with primates is that they have so many anthropomorphic qualities. It's often in the way they look or their gestures. In this case I would have tried to put more emphasis on the head in combination with the hands. Their hands are so full of character and worth using in your shot. You have managed to get a hand in there, but it's unfortunate that it's only slightly cropped and sort of pushed away in the corner. Second, I'd prefer to not see the bright triangle in the URC. You can still crop it out, but you'll lose a lot from the top. I realize though that you probably didn't have much time to shoot this, and the light and contrast circumstances with these guys are always challenging to say the least.
In answer to your collective thoughts, I completely agree that it's a bit of a shame I didn't manage to zoom out on this this shot in a way that would have allowed full view of the subject's hand; although I forgot to type this in the shooting data above, I had a 2x TC attached to my 70-200mm and I shot this one at 222mm, so I could have gotten all the hand in ;^.
As it happens, the subject was actually sitting on a wooden handrail that ran along the wooden walkway we were on, so one of my immediate aims was to try and make sure I had nothing of the manmade handrail in the frame, which resulted in me overcompensating for this shot.
Hopefully you can appreciate that back then, with such little experience out in the field, my excitement at suddenly coming across such a beautiful animal compounded with having no idea how many moments I would have to capture it in before it took off, perhaps never to be seen again, my heart was pounding with adrenaline seemingly rushing through every fibre in my body so, quite frankly, I'm amazed I was able to contain myself anywhere near well enough to fire off anything close to halfway decent shot - LOL ;^p
That being said, I regained just enough composure to allow me to form the thought that the best shots I could probably get of this wonderful subject would be as close up as possible omitting most if not all of anything other than the thought-provoking expressions it was offering. In this shot I didn't quite achieve what I was hoping for but, in the photo I'll be posting up next, I feel I was pretty much spot-on ;^)
My internet connection has been dreadful lately, but if this goes up then I'll try to post the other Orangutan shot after this, if not, then you can expect it some time tomorrow :^)
Thanks again for your valued feedback and wishing you a wild or relaxing day or night ahead, whichever is your preference and case ;^)
Ashley
For the first five days I will be staying at the Big Cat Reserve in Tshukudu, then the next nine days split between Pretoriouskop Camp and Skukuza Camp in Kruger National Park.
I was very fortunate in befriending a fellow NPN member, Stu Porter, who arranges and operates tours in Africa and I'm very grateful for all the time he's spent with me while putting this all together :^)
Stu will be my guide on the first day I'm at the Big Cat Reserve, and his Dad will be my guide for the duration of my stay in Kruger, and in both places we'll have a private vehicle.
As Stu explained, the Big Cat Reserve in Tshukudu doesn't meet with everyone's exceptions of a real African safari, as part of the reserve caters to rescued animals that have become quite accustomed to having people around and, as such, some find that this detracts from the feeling of seeing completely wild animals. But being that my main objective is to build up a collection of quality images, I'm more than happy to have this opportunity of virtually guaranteed sightings to practice and work with, and I feel, knowing by the end of five days there that I'll surely have a decent amount of the images I came for, I'll be far more relaxed during my time in Kruger where so much more will depend on luck.
By way of attempting to make the very most of this Big Trip, I'm also planning another five days in Berenty, Madagascar after my safari in Kruger, to photograph Ring-Tailed Lemurs and Verreaux Sifaka as well as anything else Nature is kind enough to share with me ;^)