Ravenscar Seal Colony- August 20th 2018

Low Tide was at 6 o’clock this evening, so we decided to go to Ravenscar early in the afternoon and then spend late afternoon and evening photographing the seals . Mum dropped Dad and me off at the car park where we usually park when we going down to see the seals and then drove round to the Ravenhall hotel with Lolly where the parking was better.
On the way down to the beach, I was surprised that, for once there was nobody camping in the field at the top of the steps. I guess the big sign on the gate that says no camping finally got the message across.

We had to move with the tide since it was obviously shortly after high tide when we got down, so that meant stopping at several points whilst we waited for the water to recede. There are plenty of interesting fossils, so this was no problem.
There weren’t any particularly rare fossilson the beach today and I was photographing them with the same methods that I have been using the whole trip.

There were some oystercatchers perched on a rock by the water which I tried to photograph, but after I spent quite some time navigating the slimy rocks between me and them, they all flew off before I get any decent shots.
It started raining when we arrived at the seal colony, so although there were several rather inquisitive seals nearby, I had to give it 10 minutes before I was able to photograph them. With all of the huge rocks around the seal colony, supporting the camera was quite easy so I got some nice sharp shots of the seals with my telephoto lens.

I had brought my D3300 with me and attempted to use it with the telephoto to get a longer reach, however the results were rather disappointing. Since I was using the tripod , I can’t work out why this was since the D3300 has no AA filter unlike the D750, so the shots from it should be sharper than shots taken on the D750. It may be due to the fact that I can’t lock the mirror up before taking shots and the smaller sensor means that camera shake is exacerbated , but this didn’t seem to be a problem at all when I used on the D750 in crop mode without locking the mirror up, so I may need to look into what I’m doing wrong there.

I spent quite a while photographing the antics of two seals who were squabbling over a sunny spot by the waters edge. I spent the next few hours moving around the beach looking for interesting shots of seals. There were also some seabirds here there which I tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to photograph.
Mum came down the steps with Lolly at one point, but they stayed near the top and just watched us.
When the sun started going down and the tide started coming in, Dad and I began the long walk up the steps to the hotel at the top of the cliff. There were some good landscape shots on the way o when the Sun started going down and the tide started coming in, that I began the long walk up steps to the hotel at the top of the cliff. There were some good landscape shots on the way up and when we reached the hotel, I took some good shots of the architecture as well as some long exposures of the waves below.
We ended up having dinner at the Raven Hall hotel, so before we went back, I had chance to take some night shots of the hotel as well as a few more long exposures.