This is quite a cool spot, just outside of kaikoura in New Zealand’s South Island. These New Zealand Fur Seal pups head up the stream to play under a waterfall. They are completely friendly and the day that we went, there was about 50 seal pups frolicking in the pond under the waterfall.

Because it is inside a forest and quite dark and it was pretty low light and as the seals were always on the go I needed a fast shutter speed. I ended choosing an ISO of 3200, hence all the noise.

The second photo is of the seals that you can see on the rocky headlands next to the road as you drive between Picton and Kaikoura. In fact there are so many seals that local fishermen regard them as a pest, maintaining they are eating too many fish. To take this photo I slowed the shutter speed right down to get the water to look misty as it moved during the exposure and aimed at a group of seals that weren’t moving too much. Despite this you can see that a couple of seals are blurry – damn those fidgety seals.

Exposure: 1 sec
Aperture: 36
ISO: 100