Resting beauty, Año Nuevo State Reserve

Two shots of a male northern elephant seal resting on the beach at sunset in Año Nuevo State Reserve. Its fun to watch them display and make their very unique vocalizations, but most of the time they are just relaxing in the sand.

Here come the elephant seals, Año Nuevo State Reserve

Last weekend was our annual trip to Año Nuevo State Reserve to see the northern elephant seals. We had a terrific trip, and I came home with some images that I'm pretty excited about. Thus, there will likely be a lot of big marine mammals on the blog this week. I'm just so fascinated by these awesome creatures!



Here are two shots to get things started while I work my way through the pile. This is a bull on Loser's Beach making his presence known around sunset. I like the first image slightly more since the eye is a bit more visible, but the second one shows him stretched a bit taller with the nose a tad more prominent (I know, pretty subtle differences). This guy was no where near the largest of the bulls we saw, but he was the most photogenic.



And since making-of images are always fun, here's a shot taken by my wife of me behind the lens photographing this male. The rule at the reserve is to stay at least 25 feet away from the seals at all times, but I'm not sure that I would ever want to get that close!

Great Blue Heron at Sunset

This great blue heron was hunting out on the mudflats of Pillar Point Harbor last November.

Three sanderlings?

When I was flipping through the files I had already processed from this trip to pick one to upload for today, something new caught my eye in this frame. The tail feathers off to the side of the left-most sanderling actually belong to a second bird behind it. Other than a slight tilt in angle towards me, the front bird could have completely blocked out the back bird. Now I'll have to look through my archives again to see if I have a frame where this is the case. This shot is from an awesome morning spent at Limantour Beach in Point Reyes National Seashore with a huge flock of sandpipers.

I also wanted to mention that Jim Goldstein posted the results for his annual blog project of 2010 Favorites. Over 160 of his readers submitted their personal favorite images of the past year (myself included) and he put together a list with a link to each one. If you have some time and want to see some great images, its definitely worth checking them out!

Resting peeps

Group shots of shorebirds can be challenging, as you need to find an interesting subject to frame, and also a pleasing formation of birds to make up the rest of the image. Here are two shots that I haven't decided yet where I stand with them -- they both had potential, but also have some flaws.



In the first shot, I like how the birds are arranged and overall I like the composition. However, the front-most western sandpiper is just outside of the focus, which can be a bit distracting compared to the sharp sanderling that is the focal point for my eyes.



For the second shot I changed the apeture to increase the depth of field (f/8 to f/11) so that the front western sandpiper is now in focus enough to be less of a distraction. However, I don't quite like the arrangement of the birds as much from this vantage point. I do like the depth provided by the crowd in the background of this shot, though.

What do you think?


Submitted as part of the World Bird Wednesday blog meme -- Follow the link to check out the entries for this week!