Phavorite Photos: A Cantonese Monkey

Another favorite photo, and as you can see, it’s a bit unusual.  This was a young chimp in the Guangzhou zoo about a dozen years ago.   I was there on a secret mission and we wanted to do something on the weekend.  One of my Chinese contacts told me there were two zoos in Guangzhou…the big one and the little one.  The big one was outside the city limits and the little one was in the center of town, so we opted to stay in town.  I didn’t think the zoo was little at all (it was at least as big as the LA zoo), and I caught a lot of great photos there.  This one was of a young chimp who seemed as interested in us as we were in him.

The photo makes it look like the chimp is just about to take something (or maybe give something) to the young lady reaching out to him.  I had my old Nikon D200 and the similar-era Nikkor 24-120 lens (two boat anchors, to be sure, but they worked well), along with a cheap polarizer that eliminated reflections.  There was a piece of inch-thick plexiglass between us and the chimp, and I took a bunch of photos playing with the polarizer and my position to get the angle right so the glass barrier would disappear.  I think I succeeded.

Two earlier favorite photos, one in Bangkok and the other in Death Valley. You can click on either to get to the story that goes with each.