Monkey Pictures Pg 1

The little critters move quickly, are suspicious of people, and will often dart off as you lift your camera.

The images featured here are all of vervet monkeys, commonly found in woodland, tree savannah and sub-tropical regions of southern Africa.

Close-up of Vervet Monkey

Click on any picture to enlarge

Vervets are quite small, with adult males weighing around 5.5 kg (12 lbs), while females weigh around 4 kg (9 lbs). Contrast in Colors In addition to finding a subject happy to pose for you, a challenge when snapping monkeys is the contrast between their light grey bodies and black faces. Your camera's light meter is likely to expose for the gray body, so the small face and dark eyes will be underexposed, showing very little detail. If possible, use the built-in flash on your film or digital camera - even in broad daylight - as this will help "fill-in" or brighten the dark areas. Of course, if the monkey is sitting with angled sunlight on its face and there are bright highlights in its eyes, then you're in luck. Entertaining to Watch Travellers on Safari, when visiting African game parks, often make the mistake of not stopping to watch monkeys - understandable when time is limited and there's other wildlife still to be seen. However, watching a troop of 15 to 20 monkeys, including juveniles and mothers with babies, can be much more entertaining than observing a couple of lions sleeping under a tree. The interaction between members of the troop, and the similarities to their human cousins, is great fun to watch and photograph. Because of their small size, you'll need a reasonably long lens - at least 200mm in most cases - to get reasonable pics of monkeys. In a Huddle The photos of the two mothers with their babies and the group in a huddle (Row 4) were taken on safari in the Kruger National Park in mid-summer. Why they are all so tightly huddled is a mystery - it was overcast, but certainly not cold (about 22C). For more monkey photos, see: Monkey Pictures Pg 2 Return to Wildlife Galleries

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