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The larger troop was located at the warming pool a little further into the park from my first encounter with the snow monkeys. There's a 500 yen entrance fee to access the warming pool. The conditions were perfect for winter photography. The temps were below freezing yet warm enough to allow extended outdoor shooting without worrying too much about clothing. I was very excited and gladly paid the entrance fee. I found the warming pool just as expected populated with over a dozen monkeys in various stages of relaxation. To my surprise, four photographers were shooting the animals at eye-level from the wrong side of a metal guard rail. Surely, they must be breaking a rule by shooting from there. Oh no, in fact it's encouraged the animals in the most photogenic ways. A park attendant continuously monitors visitors to ensure people and animals give appropriate respect to each other. But, there's tremendous latitude given to the photographers. It seems if you're giving appropriate care, you can just about do anything. The limit I witnessed was from a team of videographers from Germany that were shooting a documentary. One had a DV camera in a water proof housing floating in the pool mere inches from the relaxing monkeys. Wow, what a neat idea. Not only could you shoot the pictures of a life-time but you could do it to your hearts content.
I'm sure there were limits but I didn't see them. No matter what I did, the monkeys weren't phased. On occasion I took to shooting with my 14mm lens only six inches from a relaxing male. Not a problem at all. I personally didn't do that kind of "in your face" shooting for long. I guess you could at the risk of attracting the ire of a particularly irritable snow monkey. I found the most dangerous part of working near the pond was maintaining your balance on the slippery rocks and melting snow. It was very slick and could've easily led to a fall. I watched on photographer ignominiously drop his camera in the pool after losing his balance on the rocks. I guess accidents will happen. Just be careful. Fortunately for the poor photographer, the monkeys seemed nonplussed by the situation and didn't miss a beat. Almost as if seeing thousands of dollars of equipment taking an untimely dive seemed normal to them.
There are challenges to shooting in a location such as this. Hand of man (HOM) was definitely a factor that needed to be controlled. Between the walkway parallel to the pool and a flexible hot water line in the background, many choice perspectives couldn't be used without upsetting the natural themes of the imagery. I took to shooting very tight close-ups with wide-angle and telephoto lenses to hopefully block out most of the distracting elements. Unfortunately, I thought environmental shots were difficult to impossible without too much HOM in the image. On the other hand, there was plenty of other things to shoot. And, dependent on the subject even a little HOM could be tolerated.
My general approach to shooting was to isolate the faces. Instead of going for entire bodies and showing how they interacted or fit within the environment, I instead focused on the faces to look into their eyes. My hope was to show a little of their world by giving the viewer the opportunity to see what they see which hopefully would help the viewer feel with they felt. The other neat association of working with these snow monkeys was their "humanness." Being that they have a human form and similar characteristics, I hoped to create a stronger bond between the animal and viewer by capturing situations that might be relevant to both. Things like yawns in a hot tub, nursing a new born, screaming at a partner while all mutually similar circumstances between our species' seemed to create a connection between us.
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