creative composition here....very refreshing...the big leaf is not contributing to the composition i feel...could have opened up the exposure a bit more .....well done....

Thanks Praveen. Actually slight under exposure and emphasizing on rim lighting on both mother and kid seemed to bring out the mood better so took that approach.

This composition really works for me Mahesh. The title goes well with the image. Sometimes I wonder how breaking the rules works - "design mysticism" is what I like to call. However, w.r.t this image - I do have couple of nits :

1) I wish there were clear separation between the macaques and the background.
2) Post B&W conversion - I wish to see more tones in the image which inturn adds to point (1).

I am also thinking as to how it might have had more impact if there was some more light on the macaques.

My two cents..

Mahesh - a very tricky situation to go for B&W ( i feel ). The BG tonality blends with the macaques and hence conversion has to be really bang on ( until and unless you do things like masking and selective conversions )
What i liked the most was the composition and the way the macaques blend to the corner of the image. Probably you could have pushed them a bit more inside the frame and a bit more of exposure on the macaques would have added.

Thanks Pramod/Shiv your thoughts. I wish the macaques were in spot light and not the flat light they were actually in which would have helped the separation between the background and macaques. In this case I actually did a straight forward B&W conversion with little levels and curves. Was mainly focusing on retaining the rim lighting on the kid and mother. Looks like doing some channel mixing might help bring out better emphasis on the mother and kid. Will give that a try. Thanks again.

Would love to know more of your thoughts on composition Mahesh !

I am personally not very sure of both the composition as well as the tones. One needs to be too bold to make images like these and unfortunately am not. I too like Ganesh would love to know the reasons for such a composition. Very different thought process though.

Sorry for the delayed response. As far as the composition goes at the time of making the image i liked the emotion associated with the protective instincts of the mother and the innocence of the kid taking comfort in mothers arms. I wanted to work on this image emphasizing only on this emotion alone and eliminating every else. To this effect did the following (1) eliminate color by converting to B&W since i have always felt B&W brings out emotion better. (2) Tried emphasizing on the rim lighting on the kid and mother (3) Though i had the option to make eyes of kid as well as mother visible in this case felt it was a distraction and decided to project them as silhouettes. (4) Lastly felt more the space to the left side of mother and kid more the impact it generates than the subject itself directly. In fact if the shadows of the mother and kid were present and were falling to the left side would have thought of only retaining only the shadows and removing the mother and the kid from the frame completely. Since that was not the case the final composition what i have presented seemed to be the middle ground with the kid resting on the edge of the frame with the mother almost not there but still there in the frame.

Actually at the time of making the image looks like their is always a dilemma associated with how much time you want to think about the setting versus not losing the opportunity/moment that is out there in the front. In this case too when i made the image i realized it as a special moment and made some frames though the ideas on composition were half baked. Only during post processing spent time to refine on what i was looking for.

Thanks everyone for taking a look and sharing your thoughts.

Thanks for your thoughts Mahesh. It helps to understand photographers thoughts. I felt the main subject is placed towards extreme right however before saying so I wanted to understand where you are coming from. It is often difficult to express our feelings in an image since our feelings have higher dimensions than that can be represented in pixels. In this case I still think subject can be framed a few pixels inside and some subtle burning would help further.