La Jolla is one of the best locations to view wild sea lions and seals. These animals scatter around several spots in La Jolla, namely, Seven Sea Caves, Boomer Beach, Shell beach/Seal Rock, La Jolla, and Children’s Pool. Three years ago (2019) I made a photography journey to Children’s Pool and the result was fruitful. However, in the recent trip I found that the pool was fully occupied by swimmers, and as a result, no pinnipeds showed up there at all.

Nonetheless, many of these wild animals still gathered on the Seal Rock, which is about 100 feet from the shore. In order to get a closer look, I walked inside the cove to approach the rock. My feet got wet but it didn’t bother me. Rather, my concern was that my cameras are not waterproof! To reduce the chance of damaging the equipment, I went into the cove twice and each time I photographed the wild animals with a different set of camera and lens. The first image on this page (the cove and the rock) was taken by a 15mm wide-angle lens whereas the closeups were captured with a 400mm telephoto lens.