The stare
At the Albuquerque Zoo, I get carried away taking photos of all the animals and, later, looking at what I shot, I always get a feeling of ‘so what-ness’. Where is the challenge in shooting animals that are usually stationary, bored and almost posed? There is no difficulty in it and usually the pictures don’t say anything at all, and though I never completely delete pictures I download from my CF cards, I end up filing them under the ‘I’ll never look at those again’ folder in my mind. There are a few pictures that I end up liking, and they usually have to do with expressions.
On this day, I was shooting with a Canon 100-400 mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens. I almost half-heartedly shot this photo of the gorilla with the zoom all the way out at 400mm. It wasn’t until I downloaded the pictures that I flipped through them and almost scared myself with the intensity of the face. I was amazed at the stare from so far away, like he was daring me, out of all the people lined up at the fence, to take the picture. I also like how the image seems to change from aggression to curiosity to amusement.
Photography of Jack Craney 
I have always loved Gorillas. I feel like they are on the verge of just opening their mouths and speaking to me.
I feel the same way that you do about pictures at the zoo. In fact I feel that way about going to the zoo. I’ve seen all of those animals a hundred times at dozens of zoos, they’re all the same, in the end. I want to hike out in the wild and see of a mountain lion or a wolf.
This picture looks like it’s been squeezed a little. Is that a product of WordPress or is the gorilla’s face really that long?
That is how long the gorillas face is. They have a very high and drawn out skull that makes the top of their head look abnormal. Talk about an extreme ‘forehead boy’.
They probably have a really hard time finding hats.