Friends?

Slightly cropped on the right and punched up the contrast a little

bit. Please critique. Thanks.

Hi Niranjan, great moment you captured here! Well seen and timed! But I get the feeling you couldn't choose between either the monkeys or the symbolism of the hands. I say this, because you cropped very tightly to her feet and chopped her tail off, whilst the hand shaking takes place at the edge of the frame. Above is an example of a closer crop (I threw in some blur to simulate a smaller dof).

 

Also, perhaps it'd be more engaging and dynamic, if shot more to either side as if from the perspective of monkey or human. Come to think of it, being friends implies two sides. In this picture you only show one of them, the monkey. To make the relationship more equal and meaningful, you may need the person's head too. Or just hands of course, although you wouldn't exactly be the first to do that. Cheers,

That crop makes a huge difference. Are they really friends, or was the person feeding the monkey? Cute shot, with the face on the baby and the interaction between man and beast.

Jeroen, nice crop, thanks. I was trying to include the other monkey in the distant background, and more of the background, to show that this was in the wild (in a manner of speaking) and not a zoo shot. I have the whole tail in the uncropped version, but I guess that's not really necessary.

 

Going any closer (I had only a 50mm with me at that instant) would have disturbed her too much.

 

Chuck, they are not friends -- I think the red-shirted person was a tourist trying to feed the monkey (a peanut).

 

Good moment but visually confusing. The tree shapes and light splotches make it hard to discern the subject.

As I am interested in mother/child relationships, what strikes me here is the child relating to the mother and the mother relating to the outsider. Everything else is clutter, so I suppose the cropped photo is better, because the relationship is more front and center.

 

You could now go the next step, if you are not a purist, and try to remove the clutter from the background. It sadly does detract. Hours of work to get rid of it neatly (at least for me) and an uncertain result. But then you would have a photo about only one thing: the two relationships.

My vote for the cropped photo also. It has a lot more power. The rest of the photography doesn't add too much to the picture.

Another vote for the crop and I would invest some digital darkroomm to give a nicer tonality and better quality looking image. Otherwise it is very good.

At first glance there seems to be too much to the background and is very distracting.

Main point of interest for me would be the point of cantact between the person feeding the chimp and the chimp itself.

 

The crop makes matters much clearer but I would suggest zooming in even further to take the baby out of the picture.