I photographed this mother and baby Japanese macaque in the famous hot springs located in the mountains about three hours from Tokyo. This is how these primates survive the cold winters -- by staying warm in the natural thermal water. The monkeys have gotten so used to tourists and photographers that these wild primates are completely relaxed around people. In some instances, I used a 14mm wide angle lens to essentially fill the frame with them -- that's how close they'll get. This shot was taken with a 70-200mm lens plus a 1.4x teleconverter, and as I was framing the shot one of the babies used a rock ledge to run right in front of me and used the barrel of my lens as a stepping stone! I replaced the sky to make the background a little more interesting. My settings were 1/100, f/13, and 320 ISO.
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