« Sea Lion Caves »

We just got back from a two night stay on the Oregon Coast near Yachats. We stopped in at the Sea Lion Caves yesterday morning. It's a few miles north of Florence. I had been there before, but my wife hadn't. She had second thoughts when we stepped on the elevator to go down into the cave and the stench nearly overwhelmed her. Fortunately, the cave itself was much more pleasant. We had the place mostly to ourselves for the first few minutes so I setup my tripod for a few shots. With the lower light, I had to use longer exposures than I'd normally like to for animals and moving objects, but The Sea Lions were mostly subdued and there was more light than I expected coming in. The following is a HDR composite shot with the small island in the foreground and one of the legs of the cave leading out to the ocean behind it. The sea lion on the top of the island seemed to be posing there for me.

I also have a wide shot of the whole cave, but I was unable to position the tripod close enough to the bars protecting us tourists to keep them out of the shot. I'll throw it up on Flickr anyway if you are interested.