Blue Monkey

To return to my stated main theme of wildlife I thought I would now share a wildlife photo; it seems so long ago since I last posted a wildlife image!

This is a blue monkey, photographed on a wall at the Ngorogoro Sopa lodge in the evening.  The sun was on its way down and so the light is coming in almost horizontally lighting up the front of the monkey.  Myself and another photographer were working our way along the wall to get as close as possible without disturbing the monkey and I captured this shot as he (or she) was checking on our progress.

I shot this at ISO250 f7.1 and 1/250s with my long 150-500mm lens set at 150mm.  I like the way the light plays on him and the glint in his eyes.  I also like the way his eyes are complemented by the orange lichen on the wall.

Post has seen a slight toning down of the highlights and an increase in the vibrancy then a crop to put his eyes about 1/3rd of the way up the image and the addition of my watermark.

If I was to shoot this again it'd be great to remove the curling plant in the foreground (but you can't choose where a wild animal will sit!) and to shoot in landscape to get his tail in the image.

Inspiration

Having just joined a newly forming local photography group I have been inspired to actually try to do what I set out to do with this blog in the first place!

So for this month I have some photos from my honeymoon to share.  First up is the Ngorogoro Crater; this is a simply astounding place.  It is a 250sqkm volcanic caldera formed when a huge volcano exploded.  It's located in northern Tanzania and the floor of the crater lies at about 1800m making it free from nasty mosquito borne diseases and relatively cool.  This shot was taken from the Ngorogoro Sopa Lodge on the eastern rim of the crater looking to the west at sunset.

I used my orange tinted sunset filter to give the rose tint to the sky, although truth be known I think it is slightly overdone, however conditions for a red sky weren't great so it had to be forced.  The image was shot at ISO200, f13 at 1/10s with my 10-20mm lens set at 17mm.  To get such a low shutter speed I rested the camera on a wall and used the delay timer to make sure pressing the release button didn't cause any vibration; for the same reason I also locked up the mirror.

Post has seen me straighten the image and crop to make the top of the forest and the clouds on the right hand edge lie on the line of thirds.  I also tweaked the raw settings to sharpen the image and reduce the noise slightly (there was very little shot noise anyway due to the low ISO) and played with the shadows and highlight sliders to bring up the detail in the shadows and reduce the overexposure of the sky and clouds.

If I was shooting this again I would use a tripod and ideally wait for a day more conducive to red skies but alas I had neither my tripod nor time to do either so I am, in a way 'stuck' with what I have.