Empress

2020

In early 2019 I decided that I wanted to capture a head-on portrait of a ring-tailed lemur, unfortunately I didn’t get the shot that year, the nearest I came to achieving it was the image titled ‘The Emperor’ — it was close, but it wasn’t perfect.

Earlier this year I set the target of nailing the image by the end of the year, and I achieved it in early February.

I wanted to capture the distinctive facial markings of the species, whilst also inviting the viewer to look deeper than the animals appearances — that meant her eyes had to be pin sharp, and the background free of any tension points.

A shot like this takes time, because these are nervous creatures and they do not like looking down a camera lens — why should they?! Trust and perseverance are both key, and then you need a little luck regarding the light and weather. We got lucky, and this is the result.