Nursing Elephant Seal Pup

[BillTyler]

At this time of year elephant seals come ashore to give birth and to mate. The beach at Piedras Blancas is covered with elephant seals giving birth, nurturing their pups, and mating. This pup has been nursing for several minutes, never spilling a drop, but even the thirstiest infant fills up eventually. I had been shooting for a while and had many images of nursing pups, mostly from behind. Then this pup started to feed right in front of me at a perfect angle to show the mom, the pup's face, and the leakage at the very end of the feeding session. The light was very contrasty, but that couldn't be helped. At birth, pups weigh about 50 lbs. They'll grow to about 250 lbs in a couple of months, drinking some of the richest milk produced by any animal - 50% butterfat, Then mom, who has eaten nothing during that entire time, and is now pregnant again, weans her pup abruptly as she heads out to sea to feed.

Canon 5D mk iii
EF 50om f/4 at f/14
1/50 sec
ISO 400
Processed in Lightroom. Cropped heavily from original capture, and light and dark areas darkened and brightened respectively.

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Bill - nice to get an intimate view of the nursing behavior. I think the heavy crop has affected the IQ here. I also think you needed more ss as the image is a bit soft. Maybe try some more selective sharpening on the pup's head. Additionally, there's a magenta cast to some areas of the pup and a blue cast to the top part of mom and her shadow. Easily correctable though. Perhaps post the wider shot and we can see if we can find a comp that works without the need to crop so much.

Don't forget to add your thoughts to others' images. It's one of the best ways to learn and helps foster a community feeling. We recommend posting comments on at least 3-5 other images each time you post one of your own.

TFS,
Rachel

[BillTyler]

Hi Rachel,

Thanks for the helpful comments. I'll be writing comments for others' images later today. If anyone wants to play with this image, I've put a publicly accessible copy of the raw file and the xmp on my Google Drive at https://drive.google.com/folderview?...Hc&usp=sharing. Feel free to download and adjust in any way.

Bill

[Rachel Hollander]

Bill - I did a very quick work up of the RAW in ACR and PSCC. Dropped the contrast -10, highlights -41, shadows +15, whites -25, blacks +10, clarity +22, vibrance +5 (a lot of this is to personal taste and there are different ways to accomplish the same thing), some sharpening in ACR. In PS, a luminosity mask to tame the highlights further (65% opacity) and an inverse luminosity mask to open up the shadows a bit (25% opacity), levels and curves adjustments, dropped the magentas and cyans in a hue/saturation layer, added +3 of black to the neutrals and +2 of black to blacks in selective color, cropped, resized and then sharpened for web and converted to sRGB. WDYT?

Rachel

[Loi Nguyen]

Hi Bill, neat image. Rachel did her magic wand here and I prefer the RP much better. IMHO close up portrait works when the image has great IQ, otherwise a wider view is better. The light was harsh, but it was less so in the RP (Rachel, I need to learn about this inverse luminosity mask myself!). Did I get your EXIF data correctly?

It's a 500F4 @ 1/50 and f14 and ISO-400? I'm sure Steve will say why the low SS and ISO-400? You have the 5D3 and that camera can handle ISO-800 surely and even 1600. Also, do you really need F14 if the focal point is the pup's face? Loi

[Rachel Hollander]

Loi - thanks for pointing out the techs. I mentioned the ss but misread the aperture as f4 not f14. For an inverse luminosity mask simply invert the selection before creating the mask and then use screen rather than multiply.

Bill - you could have kept the ISO at 400 though going higher is definitely possible with the 5D3. To achieve greater ss, I would have opened up the aperture more to f5.6, 6.3 or 7.1, especially if you were anticipating cropping as much as you did. Seeing the RAW my guess is that you went with f14 to try to get the whole image in focus. I don't think that was necessary here.

Rachel

[BillTyler]

Rachel,

Thanks for the work and the comments. Your version certainly shows fewer image flaws, and is technically quite a bit better than mine. As Loi and you both suggest, I could have used a higher ISO and larger aperture. I'm hesitating about writing more, because I don't want to be argumentative. But there are some differences in emphasis that make me want to do some kind of hybrid. The biggest single item is that the center of interest is the milk dripping from the pup's mouth. Large areas of bright sand above and below seem to me to draw my eye away from that aspect of the subject, and including more of the pup's body necessarily involves more sand. Perhaps I just can't get a really first-class image that leaves that emphasis in place because the original capture was not quite good enough. Thanks again. I very much appreciate all your comments and your detailed explanation of the processing steps you used.

Bill

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

Nice Image Bill, I like the intimacy and the feeding behavior very much. Rachel has shown you the way and her tips are incredibly useful. TFS.
Sanjeev

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Bill, nice to see you back.

Firstly looking at the RAW, it is not sharp and at 1/50sec I do feel you are asking a lot, was this HH or on a tripod? Not being sharp and cropping hard in, you are throwing away a lot of information and this is reflected in the OP sadly. Cranking up the ISO would have helped and f/14, personally I would have come down, however. I don't know the set-up so I can't comment, but good to use a long lens especially at this time where mothers get protective about their off spring and or, that your presence doesn't cause the mother any distress or to abandon her pup, which can happen easily. Yes the behavioural aspect is nice, however the shooting conditions look quite tough even for around 5.00pm and has created some tough lighting conditions/exposure issues to deal with. I would have preferred a lower POV rather than from what appears to be a standing position looking down, but again there may have been restrictions? Shooting lower may have helped reduce the highlights on the pups head as the mothers body may have shielded it?

If you have the opportunity Bill I would try and get some more images, with less contrasty/harsh light and more ISO and see what happens with a wider aperture and low POV.

Not quite following Rachel's route, but I did remove the blue, so it's almost going monochromatic in it's look.

cheers
Steve

[BillTyler]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the very helpful comments. I should probably clear up a couple of points. First, the time stamp is not local time. In fact this was taken around 11:00 a.m. local time. The lens was mounted on a Really Right Stuff BH55 on one of RRS's larger tripods. The location is the Piedras Blancas rookery, near San Simeon on the central California coast. At this site, a trail follows along the top of a short cliff that marks the inland end of the beach. So the trail is runs roughly parallel to the beach, and at an estimate, 10 to 20 feet above it, varying in height as you walk along. So the available angles are limited, especially in elevation. I was at one of the lower points of the trail, looking down, and had no real alternatives for camera height. Any lower, and the view would have been obstructed by the cliff edge. Even with all those restrictions as to location, this is probably the best place in California for photographing these animals. Then nearest alternative is Ano Nuevo, just south from San Francisco, but there you are working in sand dunes that obstruct much of the view, and, at this time of year, have to go in with a docent-guided group, limiting both time and location choices.

It is illegal and dangerous to be on the the beach with the seals, especially at mating season. It isn't just the protective mothers that are a danger. The bulls weigh in the vicinity of 5000 lbs, roughly the same as a rhinoceros, and can move faster than a human runner for short distances. They have no compunction about running over people.

If I can get back, I'll try to use the very useful advice you've all been giving.

Thanks,

Bill

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Bill, thanks for the comprehensive BKG, it makes a huge difference as quite often we to make 'assumptions' about the image rightly or wrongly and also it clears up why you had to take the angle you did, so no worries, cheers.

I still think the techs are a little off, but that is old ground now. Good to hear they 'police' the area all for the protection & welfare of the seals, I have seen areas where people have used wide angle lens, feet away or where their presence or 'odour' has meant Mom has left the pup and let nature take it's course just for a few images. If they are like the Stella ones off Vancouver, or the Beach Masters in Galapagos, yep they can move and carry some weight.

Fingers crossed Bill.