Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Point Lobos State Reserve (Birds and Seals)

I recently visited Monterey and went south a bit more also visiting Carmel-by-the-Sea, Point Lobos State Reserve, and Big Sur. This trip along California's beautiful coastline has lead me take many many beautiful photos! I am here to share them with you spread over several blog posts. I hope you enjoy!

Before I get started, I would just like to remind you that I made a Facebook Fan page for this photography blog. You can "Like Us" here. I have also made Google+ and Twitter pages. If you follow or "Like" me on these, you can be updated whenever I post something new! :) Please invite your friends too! I'm trying to get more viewers on here. Anyways, as always, enjoy my photos!

Full Resolution Photos and Prints: If you want to see full resolution photos or buy prints of any of the photos you see, they are up on my portfolio for viewing. To view the best photos from this trip, use this link. See my best bird photos from 2012 here. To view all of the photos from this trip, use this link.

Parts
Point Lobos: Birds and Seals | Squirrels | Flowers and Misc | HDR Scenery | Regular Scenery
Fisherman's Wharf - Monterey, CA: George's Birds | Sapporo Sushi & Steakhouse | Scenery | Birds/Misc Seagulls
Carmel-By-The-Sea: Photos
So after lots and lots of procrastination and pushing this back, I have finally started the Monterey, Point Lobos, and Big Sur photos. Due to the high amount of photos I took, I have done some serious planning (which took quite a while) and will be separating the photos into 11 blog posts. I have decided to do the birds and animal photos first because when I post the landscape photos later, I can tell you where all these were shot! :) I originally wanted to put the birds, animal, and squirrel photos into one post, but I had too many. Since about half of them were squirrels, those I decided to split into the next post. Today's photos will just be of some birds and seals..

Update 7-14-2012: I left out one of my seal photos last time so I added it to the end of this post! :) Please check it out!

Western Scrub-Jay (Aphelocoma californica)
This was the first photo I took on vacation. Apparently, I forgot to set my camera on RAW, but it still turned out great. I think this is one of the best bird photos I got on this trip! 

Photography Tip: If you set your camera to take RAW photos, it will help you a lot in post processing. In RAW, the white balance and some other values are not set. When a photo is converted to JPEG, those values will be set and will not be adjustable. This is the reason why RAW files are so big. I personally prefer shooting in RAW as it gives me more room to post process the image. I generally set my camera to do both RAW and a crude JPEG file as RAW photos can only be previewed using Photoshop or some kind of special software. The crude JPEG file allows me to easily preview the photo and decide whether I want to upload it or not. 

The bird got startled as I approached it. I thought the motion created a nice blur to the image. 

Darn some of the pine needles got in the way... 



I shot the bird photos (except the 1st one) at one of the picnic areas. This seagull was not scared of me at all! In fact, it was walking around scavenging what ever people drops (well and eating off their table when people weren't looking). 

 There was this island where most of the seals stayed at. These are harbor seals. I'll give you a bigger overview in my landscape post next time. The photos were shot at 300 mm. I used my telephoto lens.



I accidentally left this photo out the first time I posted. Here it is! :)

This is all the photos for this post. If you read my message above, you probably guessed next time I will be posting my squirrel photos. that is right. I am! :) I hope you have enjoyed these photos. Also, please don't forget to share my blog posts with your friends! If you would like to get notifications next time I post, you can "Like" me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter and Google+. These links can also be found on the top of the right sidebar.

Parts
Point Lobos: Birds and Seals | Squirrels | Flowers and Misc | HDR Scenery | Regular Scenery
Fisherman's Wharf - Monterey, CA: George's Birds | Sapporo Sushi & Steakhouse | Scenery | Birds/Misc Seagulls
Carmel-By-The-Sea: Photos