Punta Cana, Dominican Republic
Face to Face on the Rail
In Punta Cana, a squirrel monkey pauses on a wooden rail and looks straight down the lens.
Eye contact is the hardest thing to get in an animal portrait, and the most important. With this squirrel monkey, it lasted just long enough.
The monkey is walking along a wooden rail toward the camera, all four limbs planted, its body angled slightly to the right. Its face is the focus: a pale mask around the eyes, a dark muzzle, a cap of olive-grey fur on top of its head, and two large, dark brown eyes looking directly into the lens. Its ears are pale and slightly pointed. Its arms and legs shade from grey to a bright yellow-orange at the hands and feet, small fingers gripping the edge of the rail. A long tail curves away to the right, out of focus.
The background is a soft blur of greens, teals and golds, out-of-focus foliage with a few points of light. There's nothing in it to distract. The monkey is the only sharp thing in the picture, and its eyes are the sharpest of all.
I got down to the rail's level so that the monkey would be at eye height. It changes the relationship. From above, you're looking down at a small animal. At its level, you're meeting it.
The colours of a squirrel monkey are surprisingly beautiful up close. That contrast of the white face mask, the black muzzle and the orange-yellow limbs isn't something you appreciate from a distance. The long lens and the shallow depth of field let the colours stand out against the soft background.
What I like most is how direct it is. There's no story to explain. A small animal stopped, looked into the lens, and the shutter caught it.
It sits on my homepage, and it shows something that runs through all good animal photography: patience, and respect for the subject. You can't force a moment like this. You can only be ready for it.
From the bag
Sony A7R III · Sony FE 20-70mm F4 G · 70mm · 1/160s · f/4 · ISO 100
At 70mm, the longest focal length on the 20-70mm, I was close enough to fill the frame with the monkey. Wide open at f/4, depth of field was shallow enough to blur the background into soft colour while keeping the face sharp. Focus went on the eyes. 1/160s at ISO 100 was enough to freeze the monkey's pause, though a faster shutter would have given more margin if it had moved. Base ISO keeps the fine detail in the fur clean.