The Welcoming Committee

The Welcoming Committee

To human observers there is probably nothing that appears more chaotic than a large colony of Steller Sea Lions. Whether in the water or up on haul-out rocks, the sea lions are continually barking/braying at one another or, worse yet, showing their teeth and even biting one another. Once in a blue moon the sea lions settle down - but only until one of them moves a muscle and then all heck breaks loose again! While there is obviously SOME organization to these social groupings (it's no coincidence that the largest males sit atop the haul-out rocks), most of the time these colonies seem to be in a stress-filled state of pandemonium!

We approached this colony of sea lions in a small, inflatable boat. When we were still hundreds of meters away from the haul-out rocks the lions were on 40 or of them dove into the ocean. They weren't fleeing - in a matter of seconds they descended upon us and gave us a not-so-royal welcome, swimming all around our boat and barking, braying, and showing their teeth in a pretty threatening fashion. Interestingly, almost all the members of the "welcoming committee" seemed to be sub-adults - there were no massive bulls in this group, nor were there any of the smaller pups. Between the sight, sound, and smell (these guys have an AWFUL odour!) it was a pretty amazing experience!

In wildlife photography there is almost nothing tougher than working with multiple subjects (in this case 9 main subjects!). It's always hard to get them all in focus and getting them to cooperate and coordinate what they're doing can be a nightmare. I opted for a fairly short telephoto lens to capture this shot - a 70-200mm zoom @ 200mm. Extremely conveniently, the front row of sea lions "lined up" almost equidistantly from our Zodiac - likely because while each sea lion was curious about us they were also wary, and each of them was reluctant to stray any closer to us than their buddies did. This behaviour pretty much guaranteed that I could keep all the key subjects in focus. Nonetheless, I stopped my aperture down more than I normally do when shooting wildlife (in this case down to f8) to increase my depth of field (to further ensure all the key subjects were in reasonably sharp focus). And, last but not least, the fact that this whole group of sea lions was extremely curious about us and focused on our boat helped keep their actions and behaviour patterns somewhat "cohesive" and at least "pointed" in the same direction! I'd have to check my files, but I think this is the first time I've managed to capture 9 subjects in focus and with none acting in a way that distracts from the others or from what the image is about!

Subject: Steller Sea Lions (Eumetopias jubatus)
Location: Northern Vancouver Island, BC, Canada
Camera: Nikon D800
Lens: Nikkor 70-200mm f2.8 VRII lens - hand-held from Zodiac. VR on and in "Active" mode.
Exposure: 1/1000s @ f8; ISO 400. -0.33 stop compensation from matrix-metered exposure setting.
Crop: This is close to full-frame horizontally - some cropped from top and bottom to get to pano-style format

Additional details about the image (including processing details) available here:

http://www.naturalart.ca/galleries/latest/.

Comments and critiques welcomed - probably best to view the larger version prior to doing so!

Cheers...thanks for looking...

Brad