Seals in the Wood!!!

A lovely surprise for the last shoot of 2023

Jan 05, 2024

No, it’s not a new pantomime title or a new Samuel Jackson film in the vein of Snakes on a plane, it was just a lovely way to end up the photographic part of a tough year.

Myself and my good pal Rick (Bowden) shared the usual texts about ‘Do you want to give Friday a go?’ ‘Where shall we go?’ etc etc and we decided upon a visit to Winterton on Sea, though I did mention to Rick that the seals are in huge numbers and may thwart and shoreline photography. At this point I must just point out that every winter there is a large seal colony on the east Norfolk coast in the Horsey and Winterton areas. As there were and still are lots of pups on the beach it is good practice to leave them be and keep behind the seal fences and observe rather than upset. If only everyone followed suit!!! So, coastal photography, in terms of having the sea in our images was not an option.

Luckily Winterton on Sea is such a wonderfully varied place that there is always something to shoot so we concentrated on walking out on the dunes and waiting for the early light to come through as there was a hazy band of cloud on the horizon that delayed the possibility of sunrise light.

Grasses, mosses, trees and dunes, what a landscape, I simply adore the place. As I mention far too often, I am incredibly lucky to have all this just a short drive away from home.

We walked a good 20 minutes into the reserve and then turned onto a path that cuts a little inland (it’s part of a circular walk of the area) and we went to look at a gorgeous area of silver birches.

There has been a huge amount of rainfall in our part of the world this winter and lots of areas are holding water and rivers are at very high levels and there has been lots of flooding. Unfortunately these amazing conditions also coincided with some really dull weather, December was a tough one for photography. Some will say, well you should adapt to the conditions but day upon day of grey and featureless skies is tough, especially if you want to shoot wider landscapes highlighting these unusual conditions that we were and still are experiencing.

Anyway, I digress slightly. The aforementioned area of birches looked like a mini swampland. When I was out with Rick a month or so earlier we had encountered conditions like this in an area of Broadland, but it is so tough to put these conditions across in an image, it all seems a bit too messy and this visit felt the same. It was amazing to experience and observe but tough to put across in pixel form. Nonetheless we started looking for compositions as the sun’s light started to finally find its way through gaps in the clouds.

Early light on silver birches is wonderful. Direct light can also be a pain as they are an exposure nightmare, lots of small areas of over exposed areas of bark if you are not careful!!!

Not easy making order from this much chaos!

Despite the challenges of the chaotic nature of the trees and bright light on silver birch trunks we continued to try and make images from the scene before us. Shortly after finally settling on an idea for an image I heard a splash in a pool of flood water behind me. My instincts told me it would possibly be a small deer as they are abundant in the broadland areas. This 55 year old photographer, on early morning walks has often had his heart jump as you startle a deer who was no doubt quite happy and relaxed in the reedbeds until Mr Photographer passed by. At least they are not as noisy as a startled pheasant!!!! I’m too old to be startled like that!

Anyway, of course, the clue is in the title. The creator of the splashing was a young grey seal. On an earlier visit to Winterton I had seen so many seals that had come up from the beach onto the dunes, some must have been a good 200 metres from the sea. It is amazing to witness and you can’t help but be concerned about them but numbers are so huge this year that you just have to let nature be.

Now this little fella must have been about 300 metres from the sea and must have come through the access path though the dunes and found the way to this woodland waterworld. The little one was completely unphased by our presence, it was just happily splashing about in the pool, probably thankful that the pool was calm as the seas this December have been heavy and wild and many seal pups have been lost unfortunately.

What a lovely experience, suddenly photography was forgotten and I started filming the seal, I find them such beautiful creatures. It was just a wonderful thing to witness.

A man passed us who we had spoken to earlier and he mentioned a couple of seals also in the woodland area around 50 metres from us. We hadn’t heard them as we walked past earlier but hopefully we would see them on the way out of the woodland. The sun was now lighting up the dunes beautifully so we decided to leave the ‘swamp’ and our small friend and head to more open land and take advantage of the light.

As the area where the woods start to clear we stopped to set up some shots as the light was gorgeous, and then we saw the two seals. One was happily swimming in a very small pond and the other was sitting and observing its ‘friend’ whilst happily taking the warmth of the sunlight. It was beautiful to watch. Once again I couldn’t help but switch the camera to video and film these lovely creatures.

Here’s a small clip below of our seal encounters from the morning:

Rick also took a gorgeous image of the two seals. Click on the link below:

From Rick's instagram.

Give Rick a follow too if you are on instagram!!!

I was just buzzing from this encounter with the seals. I nearly had a ‘Keith moment’, any of you have watched the Great Pottery Throwdown on channel 4 will know what I’m on about.

Wonderful experience, and then to top it off we got some lovely light and happily shot the trees and grasses as we slowly headed back to the cars. It was a fantastic way to end the photographic year. Here’s a small selection of images below: