Seals and Waders at Horsey Gap

Seals and Waders at Horsey Gap 

Yesterday I went out with two friends to Horsey Gap to photograph the Seals. At this time of the year there are lots of Seals on the beach and providing you use a longish telephoto lens, you can get some nice shots of them. Its important that you use a long lens because you do not want to get close enough to disturb them. 

The following are a selection of images I took using the Olympus OMD-E MK II , and the 300m F4 Pro lens with the MC 14 converter, giving me a combined focal length equivalent to 840m on a full frame DSLR. Although it is quite easy to hand hold this set up, I did have it on a lightweight tripod. This was mainly because there are long periods where there is nothing much happening. Its a bit early in the year for the males to be really fighting over the females, so there are times when its quite quiet on the `action` front, so it makes sense to leave it on a tripod until the fighting starts.  One advantage of  going at this time of year is that you can actually get down onto the beach. If you go in November when the pups are being born, the beach area (where the seals are) is sectioned off by the wardens. At that time you have to stay up in the sand dunes and photograph from there.

Both Matt and David are still using heavy DSLR`s, and what with the combined weight of the camera, telephoto lens, Wimberly heads and heavy Gitzo tripods, I was quite pleased to be carrying my very lightweight set up !  I have to say that I am amazed at the sharpness of the 300m F4 Pro and MC 14 converter. Its enabling me to take a lot more images than with my old Canon set up. 

When we arrived early in the morning we found a group of Sanderlings, close to the shoreline. Although we got a few shots of them, it wasn`t long before they flew away. On the way back to the car after we had photographed the Seals, we found them again, and this time they were a lot more approachable, in fact on one occasion they started walking towards me and I had to move back because, I could not get the whole bird in the frame! That's quite amazing when you consider how small the birds are.  

The light was very changeable when we photographed the Waders. One minute they were in bright sunshine, the next they were in very overcast light as the clouds moved in. 

I quite like this shot we took early on. The birds were very close to the shoreline and its quite a low viewpoint