Most photographers do not appreciate how difficult it is to photograph sea otters in Southeast Alaska.  Plenty of people, myself included, have photographed the approachable sea otters in California, but the “wild” ones in Alaska see you coming from a mile away and want nothing to do with you.  This is probably a good thing, since sea otters were previously hunted for their fur almost to the point of extinction.  I have watched rafts of hundreds of sea otters in Glacier Bay, near Cape Spencer, and in Frederick Sound, but none of them have allowed me to get close enough for a decent picture, even with a long lens.  After being frustrated so often by their elusive nature, I was surprised to find this cooperative mother & baby during my brief visit to Torch Bay last June while returning from my amazing Lituya Bay visit.  It was pouring rain, but fortunately I was able to set up my 500mm lens & tripod underneath the rain canopy on the back deck of my 22′ C-Dory while my friend Dominik Modlinksi manned the helm.  The mother repeatedly dove to the bottom to catch some food.  When she returned to the surface, it was all she could do to grab a bite of her catch before her little one voraciously snatched it away from her.  (It was kinda like me trying to eat ice cream around my daughters.)  After stealing mom’s food, the baby would climb on top of her for comfort & bonding.  It was a beautiful wildlife experience in a unique setting and I am happy that I came away with a few images.

After spending 5 days in Lituya Bay, we headed back towards Cape Spencer and Elfin Cove in very calm sea conditions, but heavy overcast clouds.  My cruising guidebook said that there were a lot of sea otters in Torch Bay, so since we were passing by we stopped to have a look.  Normally, sea otters in Alaska disappear when they see you coming from 1/4 mile away.  (This is probably a genetic trait of some kind from the few sea otters that survived the fur trade!)  We found some super friendly/mentally challenged sea otters that let us follow them around for a few hours.  I usually hand hold my 400mm f4 DO IS lens on the boat, but I had let another photographer borrow it.  Instead, I had his 500mm f4 IS lens.  This lens is not meant to be hand held for 3 hours.  Dominik was kind enough to pilot the boat while I set up my tripod and gimble head on the back deck.  I was also fortunate that my boat has an enclosed canvas back deck because it was raining while I was trying to shoot.  This is one of my favorite images.  The momma kept diving down to forage and when she returned to the surface she had to eat pretty fast before her baby came over and demanded its share.  Kids are all the same, aren’t they?

Last year, I put some effort into photographing sea otters in several different locations. I am proud of the few images that I created of Alaskan otters, especially since they are so allusive. I photographed a lot of behaviors, but the images that were missing were cute close-ups of their dry, puffy faces. I had heard that photographing sea otters was much easier at Elkhorn Slough near Moss Landing, CA than in Alaska, so I decided to give it a try. For 3 days in late October, I photographed them with my friend Phil Colla and my previous photo workshop client Nick Gorevic. This close-up of an adorable sea otter’s face is my favorite image from the entire shoot. The face is dry and puffy with some eye contact with the camera. The low angle sunset light brings out the golden color of the otter’s blond face. I like the hands being clasped together. Sea otters hold their hands out of the water in this position when they are on their backs because they do not have as much fur around their paws to keep them warm as they do on the rest of their body. This images was created with my Canon 50D digital SLR, 400mm f4 DO IS lens, and 1.4X tele-extender at f5.6 and 1/320 second.

My new friend Ken Howard was with me in Alaska last August photographing humpback whales, when I got an ominous text message on my satellite phone telling me to call home asap. Within a few minutes I was talking to my grief stricken wife about our house catching fire. Thankfully, she and my daughters were out shopping when it happened. I was only 2 days into a 10 day trip, but needless to say I cut it short and came home. Ken and I hit it off, so we started making plans for a trip to photograph sea otters in Monterey, CA. He introduced me to Phil Colla who we invited to join us. Unfortunately, one of Ken’s dear friends passed away right before our trip, so he had to back out at the last minute. Phil and I still went ahead with the trip and had a great time. In spite of our previous bad luck, Ken is coming up to Seattle next week so that we can try and have a successful trip. We are going to Vancouver Island to dive with the Steller sea lions near Hornby Island. I hope that the weather will cooperate and give us a little bit of a break.

In late October, I flew down to California and chartered a boat with Phil to photograph sea otters for 3 days. After the first day, I realized that the images I was after were during the last 45 minutes of golden light. Rafts of up to 50 otters were grouped together and quite easy to approach. Getting one to look at us at the correct angle was a challenge, but they were still much easier to photograph than any otter I have ever seen in Alaska. This portrait is one of my favorite images from the shoot. I like the dry puffy face, cute hand position, golden low angle light, and otter’s reflection on the surface of the water. I created this image with my new Canon 50D digital SLR, 400mm f4 DO IS lens, 1.4X tele-extender at f5.6 and 1/250 second.

I got rained on almost continuously for 15 days in July while waiting for a favorable weather window to make the dangerous run from Elfin Cove up the outer coast of Glacier Bay National Park to Lituya Bay. I never got the chance. The reality of motoring around in the North Pacific in 15′+ seas just did not interest me. While passing away the time, I got to spend a few days in one of my favorite locations, Taylor Bay near Cape Spencer. It is an area of unimaginable beauty and pure wilderness. Rugged sea stacks on the coast meet glaciers that come down to the sea surrounded by 12,000′ mountains. Unfortunately, the weather made it impossible to shoot any spectacular landscape scenes, but I did spend a few days photographing the most uninhibited sea otter that I have ever encountered. Usually, sea otters will not let me get within 100 yards of them before they dive down to escape. I have no idea how they were almost exterminated when they used to be hunted. They are just so incredibly shy. This male let me follow him around in the pouring rain in my inflatable. He would swim from one side of the bay to the other all the while diving down and eating everything that he could catch. Sea otters need to eat something like 25% of their body weight every day. Often, he would be visible in the shallow water directly underneath my boat, so I could watch him forage and anticipate where he was going to come back up to the surface to photograph him. This is my favorite image. He captured 2 crabs and brought them back to the surface to eat. I caught this comical expression with his mouth open while eating. This image was created using my Canon 5D, 400mm f4 DO IS lens at f4 and 1/500 second.

I’ve been back home working for over a week while getting ready for some extensive travel coming up to Indonesia, Panama, and Patagonia over the next few months. I just finished processing all of my new sea otter images. Apple came out with a RAW converter for Aperture this past week. I was not happy how the DNG files were looking, so I wanted to wait to do the processing once Aperture supported my new Canon 50D. Overall, I am very happy with the results of using the new camera. My friend Phil Colla and I have been emailing back and forth about the quality of the images from the new camera. I’ve been very pleased with what I am getting, and have to go back to some of my 35mm film scans to realize how picky we are getting these days. The detail is so good that I am down to counting nose hairs on the sea otters. Overall, I am very pleased with the new camera, except for the fact that the larger LCD screen ends up getting covered in nose smudge while holding it up to my face. I’ll try and have more of the images in the sea otter gallery before I leave November 19th.

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The past few days we have seen a few different sea otter moms and babies, but it is pretty hard to get them to come in close enough to get a shot. This image just cracks me up! I kept laughing after I took it. The baby has eel grass hanging off of its head and there is good eye contact with both of the otters. I am glad that I had my new Canon 50D firing 6fps so that I was able to capture this funny moment.

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This is my another one of my favorite images from yesterdays sea otter shoot. The puffy face on this sea otter is just so cute! My Canon 50D and my 400mm lens + 1.4X converter, makes for some very close shooting of the otters.

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We had a great second day out on the water photographing sea otters. It was very warm and sunny here today. I am pretty particular about the images I am after, and with the clear skies, I am very focused on shooting the otters in the latest most golden light that I can. The sun is going down behind some sand dunes about 20 minutes before sunset, but the light has been turning a nice orange before the otters go into the shade. Here is one of my favorite sea otter photos from today. The whole RAW to DNG conversion before importing the files into Aperture is very time consuming, so hopefully Apple comes out with an update soon. I am very pleased with the quality of the image files that I am getting out of my new Canon 50D.

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This was my first day going out on the water with Elkhorn Slough Safaris. I will be going out for the next 3 days to shoot in the golden late afternoon light. A photographer friend from San Diego drove up and one of my workshop clients has flown in to join me. We had a pretty good first day on the water. This is my favorite image from this afternoon’s shoot.

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