Picture of the Week, 5/10/10

5/10/10: I'm traveling on the South Island of New Zealand and come upon some good waves with a few surfers riding them. I hang around to check things out when I befriend a local surfer. We talk and he learns that I'm traveling around with my son taking in the sites and looking for new experiences. Hearing that he tells me of a foot path along a creek in from the ocean that leads to a waterfall and pool where some 30 or so baby seals are left for the day by their mothers while they go feed. It's kind of like a day care and the baby seals spend the day having a great time playing in the pool.

Of course we hiked to where the hidden foot path was and made our way through a forest to the waterfall and pool and lo and behold there they were! It was amazing to see them playing, jumping and basically being young kids. At one point as I'm taking photos I get a feeling that something is near me and when I take my eyes away from the camera and look down I find a curious seal looking up at me. I gently put my hand out and the baby seal comes and lightly nudges it like if to say 'ah, you humans are so cute'. And just as I had befriended a local surfer a short while earlier now a local seal was befriending me--what goes around comes around!

Nikon D300 with a Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 lens was used and shot at 1/80 of a second at f/2.8 with ISO set at 640 and an exposure compensation value of -0.7. The NEF RAW file was converted using Nikon Capture NX2 and further processed with Photoshop CS3.