Capturing a Moment in Time

Mother and Child, originally uploaded by Cocoabiscuit.

Sometimes, you just get lucky-- you witness an incredible scene and have a camera in your hand. Today, we set out by boat for a 2 hour ride from the main island of the Galapagos, Santa Cruz, to the island of Santa Fe. The entire island is a national park. We spent some time on the beach watching the Galapagos sea lions that are everywhere and very friendly. There are no predators here for most of the animals, so they don't show any fear despite people wandering around them snapping their pictures. There were newborn sea lions (pups) nestled in the rocks and this slightly older one was trying to get the mother to lie still so he could nurse. He won and she started nursing him a few minutes later.
We then went back to the boat and donned snorkeling gear and then went swimming with them. Underwater, they would swim right up to you and then quickly turn after being only inches from your face. I think they were fascinated by the mask.(The difference between sea lions and seals is that sea lions have ears.)
There was nothing very complicated about the photography today-- lots of sun, so could shoot at a fast shutter speed and have a reasonable depth of field. This photo was shot at f 18, 1/250th of a second, 180mm (using a teleconverter). Tomorrow, I'm going to try underwater photography now that I have the basic of snorkeling figured out.