Yesterday the family accompanied me on a jaunt around San Diego's coastal areas as I did some location scouting for our family holiday photo shoot next weekend. We stopped in La Jolla for a short walk by the cove, and I grabbed a few pictures of the sea lions. Jason particularly liked their barking—all the way back to the car he shouted "Ar! Ar! I'm a sea lion!"

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 55-200mm VR DX lens, in manual exposure mode. Focal length 200mm, aperture f/5.6, shutter 1/250 sec, ISO 400. Post-processing in Aperture 3: orange filter BW preset; curve for highlight recovery and black point; second curve for tone and contrast; slight dodge in the lower right corner; burned over the highlights in the rock and sea lion; intensify contrast adjustment brushed in over the water.

Thoughts for improvement: I would have liked to see this one at f/8-1/125-400 or maybe f/11-1/125-800. I had a fair amount of trouble nailing the focus and in any case I'd prefer more depth of field. As far as timing, I'm a bit torn. I really like the texture of the water above the spray, but it might have been a bit more dramatic if I could have waited for a bigger wave.