The Eyes Have It

Silverback Gorilla

Santa Barbara, California U.S.A 2015

My friend, Judi, and I drove up the coast to Santa Barbara yesterday. Our plan was to spend the several hours photographing the animals and birds at the zoo.  The zoo is small; it is designed for children and it is nearly always possible to get a good view of the animals.

The gorillas apparently hadn’t yet satisfied their hunger. One large male scavenged for tidbits scattered over their large enclosure. He was able to pick up penny-sized pieces of food using his thumb and forefinger. It seemed rather sad. He reminded me of a derelict looking for cigarette butts. His companion pulled down a tree branch and sat in the shade picking off the leaves one by one. Now and then he’d glance about, wary that the scavenging gorilla would grab his tree branch. That accounts for his expression.

To make this portrait dramatic, I increased the contrast. This caused his eyes, hiding under that weighty forehead to go black. We need to see his eyes. Without them the portrait becomes a series of black and white blobs. One way to lighten them is to copy the layer, change the blend mode to screen, add a mask, invert it and using a brush with white paint away some of the black revealing the eyes. That’s what I did with the anteater below.

Sense of Smell

You can see just a speck of highlight in the anteater’s eye. Without it, the photo has no life.