In the past 10 years has focused on sister island of Helgoland "Dune" established a colony of gray seals and also nurseries for young animals. The conditions on this dune offer the photographer the opportunity to come particularly close to the animals.

As opposed to gray seals seals on the German coasts are very rare, there is already a rarity, so many of them to see on a beach. The total stock of gray seals in Schleswig-Holstein North Sea waters is estimated at about 150 to 200 animals. Grey seals are considerably larger than seals. An adult male can be up to 2.3 meters long and 220 kilograms well be difficult.

Since gray seals are aggressive predators, we recommend a due distance (gray seals are often hurt each other even when they get too close). Nowhere, however, one can observe these animals in so short a distance. From just 40 meters I could (based on the image) of the recordings with focal lengths between 400 and 800 mm implement.

Panorama of the north beach

A 360 ° panorama of the northern beach of the dunes with panoramic gray seals on my bank website panovista.de .

For more information

• Publication of the protection of the Wadden Sea Station Grey seals on Heligoland
• Grey seals in the Wikipedia

A few days ago I got some pictures of the two kittens Lilly and Luca published. Since the images were taken as positive and in the selection of photos Lilly was a little too short, I decided to furnish a few more pictures.

Pictures of Lilly:

Luca will not be so jealous:

Out of competition, but thematically fitting, I've found a nice picture archive. This shot from April 2006 was created by chance in an old barn window:

Tags: imagery , gallery , cats , animals , baby animals

Baby animals exert a special attraction. The playful little kittens are just clumsy sweet. The disadvantage for photographers: keep quiet in the rarest cases, and are therefore hardly keep in the viewfinder.

So it was not easy to photograph the children of our two cats girlfriend. The fast movements require very short exposure times (1 / 250 to 1 / 1000 seconds) to avoid motion blur. In addition, a faster autofocus advantage. To get more light, resulting in shorter exposure times, I have the following pictures with zoom lenses with fixed focal lengths taken place.

The first portrait was created with my Canon EF 50mm 1:1.8 II at 1 / 800 second and aperture 2.2.

The following two pictures were taken with the Canon EF 28mm 1:2.8 was added at 1 / 640 seconds, respectively, 1 / 1000 second at each diaphragm 4.

Many thanks to the patient model for the relaxed shooting and of course to the "Cat Mom".

Tags: imagery , gallery , cats , animals , baby animals