When I looked through this old series of photographs from the zoo in Wisconsin, most were snapshots of zoo animals. I almost passed this one by. Then I noticed the hand. The gorilla is hiding under this tarp and what I noticed this time was you can see his hand, which gives the viewer a clue. I decided to edit this photo to try to isolate that emotion of the gorilla hiding in his zoo enclosure.
My immediate eye said to crop this and convert to black and white from the original raw version. The B&W gave it a stronger emotional pull. From there, I wanted to do some dodge and burn a bit and carefully pay attention to his hand. I wanted to make it stand out a bit more. I burned the bright white tarp and also I burned the grass around the hand. I pulled the exposure up a bit on the hand.
From there, I wondered if the frame around the covered gorilla was competing with my subject. So I burned that down and I also cropped a touch more in. I think that helped my frame. After what I thought was the final image, I decided I wanted to try to add some grain. The grain did help. I think the grain takes away from the crispness just a little and softens the image. I like that because it gives the viewer another reason to linger.
Overall, I think the changes made really turned this into a nice photograph. The subject doesn't immediately pop out to the viewer. It takes a little searching and this gives reflection time and really helps to feel the isolation and loneliness of this hiding gorilla in his zoo enclosure.
