Gorilla

[Cadebou]

Took my seven month old son on his first trip to the zoo. So naturally I took over 700 pictures of which he was in only a small minority. That's what happens when a veterinarian goes to the zoo.



Shot with D90, 70-300 mm VR at ~220mm, f 5.3, s 1/125. A little sharpening, curves and what not in PP.

Britt

[rick55]

What an incredible shot! It looks like a posed studio photograph of the subject looking thoughtful. The highlights in the eyes, and and the colors on the fur are spectacular.

Cheers,
Rick

[David]

Absolutely astounding shot. As Rick says - highlights, fur, colour, pose and composition - all brilliant. As I'm not a gorilla expert is the animal male or female; can you tell from the shot?

Cheers

David

[Donald]

So naturally I took over 700 pictures

Naturally!!

Absolutely astounding shot.

Ditto
You've got to tell us how you got this. Through glass? From the side of an enclosure? It's the very tight framing that makes it too.

[carregwen]

What a handsome fella, and a lovely shot. So tell us, as a vet how would you go about treating him?

[Cadebou]

Wow! Thanks everyone.

So to answer a few questions...

1. It was almost the worst time of day to shoot (~1pm) on a very sunny day.

2. I was extremely lucky that the gorilla was right at the front of the enclosure (viewed over the top of the rail so no glass and reflections to worry about)

3. The zoo was jammed with people and I had to shoot this from about three deep (handheld in burst mode... burst mode is my savior)

4. I tried to overexpose the background stones so that I could more detail from his face. There was a slight reflection coming off of the wall in front of him helping my cause. Still wasn't quite enough to balance everything out so I selected around his eyes in PP and very carefully lightened the area just a little more.

5. The true secret... I took about 40 shots of this guy. I owe all the credit to my wife and her family for not rushing me.

6. Finally, this is an adult male silver back. The size and shape of the head are very characteristic for an adult male.

Hopefully I'll have time to rummage through the rest of the images from the trip for any keepers, but this one jumped out as I was doing my initial cull.

Thanks again,

Britt

[David]

Hi Britt - Thanks for answer re gender and species. The point about 40 shots is very interesting. I guess that this might be a rough ratio of what is necessary to get one really good shot. Any comments from pro's who photograph animals a lot?

Cheers

David

[Cadebou]

So tell us, as a vet how would you go about treating him?

Ordinarily my answer would be "very carefully" muahahahaha.

Ahem, sorry about that. But my wife is also a veterinarian and she works primarily with primates so I would just ask her what to do.

Britt

[Donald]

The point about 40 shots is very interesting. I guess that this might be a rough ratio of what is necessary to get one really good shot. Any comments from pro's who photograph animals a lot?

Don't know about pros, nor about photographing animals, but I took 43 to get what I wanted on 'The Tay Bridge' (and it doesn't move), so I would reckon that 1 out of 40 for an animal shoot is pretty good going (would be for me anyway!).

[Sahil]

Effin goood shot. The fur, eyes, facial expressions all are just amazing.

[Cadebou]

Effin goood shot. The fur, eyes, facial expressions all are just amazing.

Thanks, Sahil.

This is definitely one of my favorite photographs that I've ever taken, and I'm glad I've been able to share it with you all (I'm from the southern US and it took a lot of effort not to write ya'll).

Thanks again,

Britt