{"id":1403,"date":"2025-05-29T07:05:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T06:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web33.secure-secure.co.uk\/marklucock.com\/blog\/?page_id=1403"},"modified":"2025-05-30T05:57:15","modified_gmt":"2025-05-30T04:57:15","slug":"telling-a-more-complete-photographic-story-from-a-single-snapshot-to-an-integrated-whole","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/web33.secure-secure.co.uk\/marklucock.com\/blog\/telling-a-more-complete-photographic-story-from-a-single-snapshot-to-an-integrated-whole\/","title":{"rendered":"Telling a More Complete Photographic Story: From a Single Snapshot to an Integrated Whole"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Adult hanuman langur<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When I was young, I always looked forward to seeing the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition outcomes. The competition actually began in 1965, but my interest in wildlife photography tracks back to the 1980\u2019s, when in 1984 the Natural History Museum joined with the magazine to create the competition we now know. I vividly remember seeing competition images of Hanuman Langurs elegantly sitting in trees. These beautiful Old-World monkeys are native to India where they occupy forests and lightly wooded zones, including in urban areas. I was captivated by the images in BBC Wildlife Magazine<\/a>, and promptly placed this \u201cGrey Langur\u201d in my must find and photograph mental filing cabinet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Juvenile hanuman langur<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Achieving this early photographic goal took several years, in fact it wasn\u2019t until 2011 that I visited Rajasthan, and Jodhpur in particular, a really good place to catch these interesting primates. The reason for this article is simple, the competition winners were brilliant portraits and studies of this species in a seemingly perfect natural bubble. The sort of stylised images we all aspire to. However, reality soon kicks in in India, and the Jodhpur Langurs that I met were every bit as photogenic, but way more urbanised and lived cheek by jowl with humankind. The title of this piece is \u201cTelling a More Complete Photographic Story\u201d, and by the time I left Jodhpur, I had beautiful portraits, but also contextual images showing the lifestyle and lifecycle of these primates. The reality is that the competition winners only showed a single facet of this species, one that did not necessarily reflect the animal\u2019s wider biology. I suppose I\u2019m raising an important question about showing the broader truth about an organism versus an idealised abstraction of that truth. We photographers are very good at the latter, but less so the former.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


The images here could be taken with any camera system, and any of the great budget zooms that are available. For the record, these primate shots were taken on a Canon system. I suppose my reasoning for this article is to get photographers to look beyond a single image and compile a life story. This can be achieved on a short visit to an interesting location as in Jodhpur, where I added in images of the Menhrangarh Fort, streets and other views to complement baby langurs, adults and night time langur gatherings on electricity pylons (shot at Udaipur) that are anthropogenic substitutes for lost forest trees, or maybe this aerial venue simply allows proximity to easy human food pickings (probably both).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hanuman langurs settling in for the night on an electricity pylon, an anthropogenic substitute for forest trees<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n


There is a story untold here – on a visit to Vijay Stambh, Chittorgargh Fort, while in Rajasthan, I crouched down to shoot this lady in a pink sari with the tower behind her \u2013 next thing I knew I was laying on my back. A dominant hanuman langur had come across and pushed me over onto my back, and all the visitors around me were having a good laugh. Sadly, no one took a picture or video of this, or maybe not sadly in this day and age where I could have become an overnight social media sensation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As I took this lady in her sari juxtaposed against Vijay Stambh at Chittorgargh Fort, Rajasthan, a langur came across and pushed me over onto my back<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The slide show below has more images to illustrate the photographic narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n