Hubbard's Sportive Lemur
by Simon Bennett
Hubbard's Sportive Lemur photographed in the Zombitse-Vohibasia National Park, Madagascar. These nocturnal lemurs spend the day perched in tree forks like this.
Canon 5D MkIII, EF500 f/4 I + 1.4x, tripod, ISO1600, f/8, 1/40, shot vertical with slight crop for composition.
Comments
7 commentsLove the face and eyes - good detail and exposure.
Sandy
Vincent, I didn't use MLU/remote just gitzo/mongoose gimbal head. I took a 7D and 5DMk3 on the trip. Mostly I used the 7D/500mm+1.4x for birds/distant lemurs (although sometimes switched bodies to 5D3 If I could get close enough), and mostly used 5D3 with 70-200m for closeups - you can get quite close to many of the lemurs.
The better high ISO performance of 5Dmk3 in rainforest was most useful. I was reluctant to use flash as most of the lemurs who have anything to do with tourists, actively avert their eyes from directly looking at cameras due to the amount of flash they are subject too. It was very hard to get a full eye contact portrait of a lemur.
Great eyes and certainly the shyness comes through strongly on this image - looks to me like that lemur would prefer to be almost ANYWHERE else than sitting here! Techs look quite strong on this image - nice and sharp and certainly exposure looks good.
One thing caught my eye here as a bit of a distracting element - that gray tree trunk along the right side at eye level and above looks strangely "misty" or blurry when it appears to be contiguous with the sharper regions of the tree (so it appears like it was intentionally blurred - tho' I realize it may just be further in the background). If it is just a background tree I'd be tempted to experiment with selectively darkening it a little (and personally I might be tempted to do the same to distant green/blue background).
Cheers...thanks for sharing this...
Brad