various outdoor images Flipper Swipe

There's a spot on the Pacific Coast Highway near San Luis Obispo where a bunch of Elephant Seals like to beach themselves to sleep. It's not well-marked, but it's reasonably well-known - the two times I've been there, there's also been a tour bus stopping by, briefly discharging its full complement of point-and-shoot wielding tourists. [some of whom, I'm sure, have great pictures of the seals sleeping and playing.] This particular guy caught my eye partly because he was relatively close to the limit for approaching the seals, and largely because of the cool flipper swipe he left as he hauled himself into place. Unfortunately, I couldn't completely keep the beach log from overlapping him, but nature is like that. Image was shot with a 300/4.0 lens, firmly mounted with my camera bag further bracing the tripod against the driving wind. Light levels were fairly low, so I couldn't increase the DOF much, but this was roughly the effect I wanted anyway. This was probably shot at f/5.6.