Mammals Grey Seals at Horsey Gap

[Unframed Dave]

I took these mid afternoon on Sunday.

Several mistakes were made:

1. Don't go on a Sunday, if you can help it. It was rammed.
2. In previous years, we have been able to get much closer to the seals. These were all taken at around 100 metres from the seals. I only took a 300mm lens, really 400 to 600 would be more appropriate at this range. It's huge testament to the 300 f2.8 that these came out as well as they did, they are massively cropped.
3. We went too late in the afternoon, the sun is low in the sky this time of year and the shadows from the dunes and bystanders were well onto the beach, only the tideline was really shootable.

Other than that, it was fantastic to see the seals. There was a lot of playing from the juveniles and a lot of territory posturing going on. Plenty of pups around as well, but as these don't have waterproof coats, they were mostly further up the beach in the shade.

• ILCE-1
• ISO 800

• ILCE-1
• 300.0 mm
• ƒ/6.3
• 1/1600 sec
• ISO 800

• ILCE-1
• ISO 2000

• ILCE-1
• ISO 2000

• ILCE-1
• FE 300mm F2.8 GM OSS
• 300.0 mm
• ƒ/6.3
• 1/640 sec
• ISO 200

• ILCE-1
• ISO 200

• ILCE-1
• ISO 200

• ILCE-1
• ISO 200

• ILCE-1
• 300.0 mm
• ƒ/6.3
• 1/500 sec
• ISO 200

This year's stats to date:

 

[Ralph]

Great shots and I couldn't get over the crowd that had shown up.

 

[Unframed Dave]

Great shots and I couldn't get over the crowd that had shown up.

Several years ago, when my dad was more mobile, we used to take a picnic breakfast onto the dunes with us on boxing day. Bit of a family tradition, sausage sandwiches, flask of hot chocolate, that kind of thing. There weren't the restrictions in place then and you often had a curious seal greet you along the top of the dunes. Anyway, I'm rambling, where I was heading......

This part of Norfolk has a fairly high percentage of holiday home owning folks from London. They would often turn up with hampers, tables, chairs and bottles of champagne. We spent more time watching them than we did the seals.

Unfortunately, the restrictions had to be put in place because the modern day public don't seem to have a clue about how to behave. They were approaching the seals to have selfies taken with them and letting their dogs run freely on the beach. It was inevitable.

There are still areas where you can get eye level with the seals at an appropriate distance, but Horsey will always hold a special place in my heart.

 

[Ralph]

Sadly people have just lost that thing called common sense which is all so often seen these days.
One just pushes the limits and then the next follows and so on.
People ore more like Sheep today than individual thinking beings.
And they make things so bad just because they are stupid.