I’m a keen amateur photographer and love to see wildlife in it’s native environment so doing an Elm Wildlife Tour of the Otago Peninsula near Dunedin was one of the highlights of my recent whirlwind week exploring New Zealand South Island via Dunedin.
The tour guides including Elm Wildlife Tours co-owner Brian Templeton and his staff clearly knew all about the landscape and wildlife we saw during the tour as well as keeping the wildlife #1 priority by warning members of the group to stay far enough from the animals so they wouldn’t be disturbed.
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Luckily I was using a media loan Canon EOS 7D digital SLR that day with a huge 400m lens zoom lens so I could take closeup photos from many metres away (note for the photo below: when photos are taken with a lens that has a really big zoom it makes all the parts of the photo look much closer to each other than they are)
My goal for this trip to NZ was to take a really great photo of a Penguin which I managed to do lying down on the ground so that I could photograph the penguin from it’s own height with the waving grass in front and behind the penguin blurring nicely.
I also managed to capture a great bonus sequence of photos of a yawning sea lion thanks to the Canon EOS 7D’s phenomenally fast machine gun like ability to take 8 high resolution photos/second.
For me the penguins and sea lions were the stars of the show but you will also get the chance to see other wildlife including New Zealand Fur Seals.
DISCLAIMER: I was not paid for the NZ trip and have sole control over what I write and say about it. All expenses for the trip were covered by Tourism New Zealand and regional subsidiaries. Camera gear was loaned by Canon (except for my own personally owned Canon S90 camera). Some clothing was sponsored by Goretex
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