5000 pounds of blubber

I’ve photographed both northern and southern elephant seals standing just a few feet away from them, and it does feel a bit intimidating to be so close to such large wild animals. I photographed this southern seal with a 24-105mm lens (set to 105m) on South Georgia Island on my way down to Antarctica. That tells you how close I was. I would have liked to shoot this from a lower point of view, but I was concerned about being attacked by 5000 pounds of fast-moving blubber. We were definitely not in the same weight class! My settings were 1/160, f/16, and 250 ISO. Notice that the background is not sharp even though I used a small lens aperture. That's because I was so close to the seal.