Macaque Mood

I often stum­ble upon this mon­key in some ‘con­test’ or ‘col­lec­tion’ folder in my hard disk and each time we meet I stop and give him a moment of my time. I stare him in the eye and ask my self — what is he up to? The ques­tion remains unan­swered, and my mouse moves on to explore more recent places.

Shot in the sum­mer of 2005, on my first trip to Band­hav­garh, it is still one of my favourite snaps. Pri­mar­ily for it’s emo­tional quo­tient, and because it trans­ports me back to the very moment it was captured.

The morn­ing ride was com­ing to an end and the over­cast sky had a scat­ter of driz­zling gray clouds. The light had fallen to a mere 1/30 of a sec­ond at f4.5, ISO 100. Wait­ing for the tiger was use­less; even if it walked slowly, it would be reduced to a blur of white, black and orange. It had rained well the pre­vi­ous night and the tiger had no rea­son to leave its rest­ing place. The jun­gle was at peace, wel­com­ing the cool after a scorch­ing summer.

My Gypsy slowly trot­ted along, find­ing its way towards the main gate of the National Park. I was pre­pared to call it a fruit­less morn­ing when i noticed this troop of Rhe­sus Macaques on a tree some dis­tance off the road. The mother and kid were sit­ting together, see­ing the vehi­cle stop she darted up the tree leav­ing her kid help­lessly star­ing into my lens. The young adult in the pic­ture was sit­ting fur­ther right on the same branch and came to the kid’s res­cue – or so i thought. But when the kid wanted to go to her mama he held her back…very confusing.

The light in this area was just right. The trees were not too close and the short yel­low grass allowed for some ambi­ent light to bounce in. But what ‘makes’ the pic­ture is the soft even light which elim­i­nates shad­ows, which would not have been pos­si­ble had it not been for the over­cast sky. On a sum­mer day with­out clouds, the light at this time would be too harsh to con­trol. The open back­ground would act as a back­light and the mon­keys would be plunged in the deep shadow of the tree itself.

This photo is taken at that time – the young adult is hold­ing back the baby who wants to go to her mother sit­ting higher up in the tree. The evil expres­sion on the mon­keys face is not deci­pher­able. But the men­ac­ing looks always gets my atten­tion and i spend a few moments look­ing at him and won­der­ing — What was he think­ing at that moment?

Tagged as: Macaque, monkey