Breakfast at Nelapattu: Starring Young Rhesus

A potpourri troop of "pati mankada" or Rhesus Macaque were perched beside the pathway to Nelapattu and were nibbling at the tamarind fruits; oblivious to our approach.

I half expected the more audacious of the lot to suddenly jump on top of us, snatch the camera equipments, spring to the top of the tree canopy, "monkey" around with the camera and accidentally click, thus creating a totally new "monkey" perspective.

That did not happen.

Image details:
Canon EOS 400D, f5.6, ISO-100, 1/125, +0.3 step exposure bias.
Location: Nelapattu Bird Sanctuary

Pati mankada. LOL
Its a nice image. very personal. Just try reducing the highlights on the back. You could get a bit more detail out of it.

I don't think the highlight is bright enough to distract. Reducing it further will result in losing details. One has to be cautious in photographing animals with fur and birds with bright plumage as the chance of overexposing is always there.

I would have also loved just the face. These fellows seemed to know that people carry food items into Nelapattu. One of them was fearless and started snatching from Kalpesh. I had to shoo it away with my tripod. The interesting thing is I just pointed the tripod like a gun and they ran away. Similar reaction I had seen with langurs as well.

I was confused about the exposure setting for this picture. The pathway at Nelapattu is shaded with bushes on both sides. Luckily, light was streaking on this monkey from a gap at the top.

I increased the exposure bias by .3 steps hoping the background bushes would not be full of shadows. Looking at the image, I think a 0 exposure bias might have been good.

Bibhav: after your suggestion, I did try with reducing the brightness, but that reduced details further and the result did not seem faithful to my recollection of our monkey friend!

You could have done a few things to get some more light on the face so that the eyes are lighted. Then the difference between the tones in the monkey's back and face would have become less.

One method is by using a fill flash. Unless you master it, it will be distracting. The second method is asking someone to carry a reflector and stand near our monkey friend so that some light is reflected back. :D

Ofcourse, you can wait for the monkey to turn its head towards light. You can also create a composition keeping in mind the dynamic range of your camera.