The Lumpy Log

The Lumpy Log

And now for something a little different - and one that likely won't be everyone's cup of tea...but...

Non-habituated, wild sea otters can be a real challenge to photograph - not only are they quite wary of humans (for darned good reason!), but so often even when you see them you don't see MUCH of them! Given how hard it can be to get ANY shot of them, getting a creative shot of one of them is ridiculously challenging!

This is a female sea otter (the scab on the nose is diagnostic of a female - the males bite them on the nose during breeding) and one with a much lighter face than average. She seemed almost curious about us and swam parallel to our inflatable zodiac boat a number of times. The clear blue sky was reflecting off the dark water and I was quite taken with how the warm colors of the otter contrasted with the ever-changing blue bands on the water's surface. So, I decided I wanted to "work" with the colour contrast and have the visible bits of the otter stand out in the shot via colour and sharpness differential. Given the shooting conditions and the gear in the zodiac (and the fact that I was hand-holding a 600mm lens) the only way I could get low enough to get the shot was to plank my body totally across the zodiac (feet on one pontoon and upper back against the pontoon on the opposite side) and rest the lens on my chest and shoot between my feet! Hey...ya gotta do what ya gotta do to get the shot! I was appreciative of the time I've spent doing Pilates exercises during this sequence of shots! And I was real glad that no one photographed me in such a crazy (and decidedly non-flattering) contortion!

I grabbed about 20 shots of the little girl during this sequence, but in most of them the blue/near black pattern in the water wasn't visually appealing or - just as often - the otter was looking away while shooting. This was my absolute LAST shot in the sequence and it turned out pretty much how I visualized it. Neither the muscles in my core nor the otter permitted the capture of any more shots after this one!

Subject: Female Sea Otter (Enhydra lutris) laying low in the water
Location:Northern Vancouver Island, BC, Canada
Camera: Nikon D4
Lens: Nikkor 600mm f4 VR VR lens - hand-held from floating and bobbing Zodiac. VR on and in "Normal" mode.
Exposure: 1/1600s @ f8; ISO 360. -1.0 stop compensation compensation from matrix-metered exposure setting.
Crop: This is full frame horizontally, with crop from top and smaller crop from bottom

As always, more about this image (including processing details) on my website. For Retina display users that are viewing this image (including iPad and iPhone users) the version on my website is optimized for those high density displays:

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

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

Cheers...

Brad