About the Image(s)

As a nature photographer going to the Galapagos is like a candy land, as subjects are not intimidated nor frightened of humans, especially photographers. On a trip in 2012 this sea lion pup hardly moved when I was photographing 10 feet away. As a matter of fact, I had to wait for it to open an eye, if only briefly. The challenge was to choose the best of the 4000 images I shot that trip.

I wanted to try a technique to under expose the whole image in order to emphasize the high lighted areas, and chose this image to try it on. The original exposure was fairly well lit, so I under exposed it in Lightroom to darken the overall exposure, and then performed some selective burn & dodge and sharpening in Photoshop, before bringing it back to Lightroom to crop, heavy vignette and resize. I think I achieved the desired effect. How do you like it?

Shot with Canon 7D and Canon 100-400mm lens at 135mm, 1/100 sec at f/10 and ISO 1000.