Courtney Hancock

For this final photo series, I chose to capture the sea lions that inhabit Point Dume. As a photographer, I have always been drawn to include the natural world in my work in some way or another. I have done a lot of landscape photography, and I have experimented in manipulating the visuals of nature to create new aesthetics, but capturing the personalities of animals was something I had not yet done. While I have seen a lot of nature photography that aims to show case the visual beauty of animals in extreme detail, I had never seen a photo series that successfully conveys the dynamic of a family of animals within nature and the dynamics and personalities that exist in their group. As a result, this became my main goal in photographing these sea lions. All of these shots were captured using 35mm film and while you may not be able to see every last whisker on their faces as you might have been able to had it been digital photography, the moments that I captured in this photo series show the authentic behaviors and personalities of these creatures emphasized by the dramatic beauty that surrounds them.