Otter Heaven (Day 4-6)

I've blasted through the edit and have finished converting the images in Lightroom. As I may have said previously, I make very little alterations to my images. If I have missed the exposure by more than 1/2 stop, then I will usually bin the image unless it is capturing something amazing. The contrast is left as standard at +25 and the vibrance and saturation are rarely altered at all. If anything, vibrance gets +10 and saturation just +5. My tone curve is also fairly even with Lights getting +10 and Darks usually receiving -5. One very useful gadget is the HSL settings. If the water or sky is looking a bit washed out, you can change just the luminance of the Blues and Aqua to darken them. It is like a digital polariser in its effect. This was the easiest edit I have from Mull, with most of the images left as is. The light was generally very good and there was often enough colour and punch in the images straight from camera.

I just watched and waited for the first couple of days. I had opportunities, but I didn't want to rush things. Besides, the weather was very dull and drizzly, so it was pointless. I have enough dull otters in brown seaweed. These images are in order of capture time:
This was the first shot I took during this trip and it is now one of my all-time favourites.I have so many shots of otters in seaweed it was brilliant to have the opportunity to photograph an otter, near its holt, on dry land. I stayed down wind and used a 600mm f/4 on a tripod and gimbal head, so I was well away from the entrance. I never enter the area of the holt as otters are just too easily disturbed. The smell of human footprints would be enough to deter them from coming back.

Shortly after the 'holt shot' the family of otters (mum and two fully grown cubs) departed and fished from barnacle encrusted rocks. I had expected them to swim on some distance, but they caught small fish and crabs almost immediately. This shot is of the mother. They came further round than I had expected and the swirling wind took my scent straight to them! She was more inquisitive than alarmed and simply dropped off the rock to continue her fishing.

Two days later, I found the same otter family fishing from a shingle beach. I decided to leave the tripod behind and used a beanbag to get a lower point-of-view. After about an hour, a cub came to shore with a large green shore crab. After feasting on the crab, the cub ran along the beach calling to find its family which it had lost sight of while feeding. Luckily for me, the sun came out just as I started shooting... more to come!