One of the blogs that I subscribe to is Photobotos.com which promises to deliver one amzing photo per day from photographers around the globe. It pretty much keeps this promise consistently. The photo shown here definitely falls in that category and was posted yesterday and really caught my eye. It was a great shot, composed beautifully with deep color and expressiveness. It was shot by photographer Romain Mattei while traveling in Malaysia. Mattei’s story, below, of how the shot came about really adds something to this photo. He writes:
I was spending the day in Kuala Lumpur without any plan of what to visit or to see. I was just going straight with only a map not to be lost. I make an amazing encounter purely by luck in a place where there were no tourists at all. A monkey and two cats were chilling on a chair in a patio. The two cats appeared to be pets but I wasn’t sure about the monkey. They were slipping and then playing together before the playful monkey pushed one of two sleeping cats out of the chair for fun. The cat lied down in order to keep on with its nap and this is when the monkey started to massage him.
To me, it was a massage because he was really focused on doing it well on the back and the tail but of course if he would find a flea, he wouldn’t refuse a little snack. The cat was really enjoying and I was shooting the scene with my 100mm f/2.8 macro lens, which allowed me to be quite close to the scene. The two animals were not shy at all, the monkey was doing his job and the cat was even posing for the pictures.
I took a whole series of pictures, it was too unique not to burn my Memory Card. I shot this one wide open in order to get the monkey a bit blurry but not too much so that the massage scene would be very recognizable. Like this, the focus point would be on the cat and the shot would be more eye-catching stressing the cat’s eyes looking right at me.
Also, I didn’t want to center the cat’s face in order to strengthen the composition and I chose to place the cat on the picture following the thirds rule. The monkey was more or less in the center, but being blurry it didn’t affect the composition, not catching the attention that much.
I left the right side empty, apart from the monkey’s tail in order not to overload the whole composition.
I felt extremely lucky to witness this scene. After the monkey finished his massage/skin care, he went away and while I was shooting the cat completely relaxed, he came from a side and stole two bills in my pocket. I couldn’t believe it, I chased him to get my money back (maybe I should have left it to him as a reward for such a photographic moment) and while I was about to take my bills back from his hand, he put his hand behind his back like a little child!! He only wanted to play and then he gave the bills back to me himself. An extraordinary animal, so smart!
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I came across some very interesting allegorical photos on the PhotoBotos.com site. They are the work of a young photographer from Budapest, Hungary by the name of Sarolta Ban, who digitally manipulates images of basically everyday items into thought-provoking scenes. Her work reminds me very much, in tone and substance, to that of Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison, who created the fantastic photos of the book The Architect’s Brother, which I featured here on the blog this past year. 
The primary difference is that the ParkeHarrison work is not digitally manipulated. They instead physically create the scenes and photograph them. For some, especially photography purists, this is an important distinction. But I am definitely willing to look past that and simply admire Ban’s beautiful work. For me, it comes down to how her imagery affects me and makes me react. And for me, her work has a dreamlike quality, filled with a quiet magic. Peaceful but ponderous. Just good stuff.
Redtree Times 