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Description

My Cascade Otter, who I call Otter-Otter, or possibly Otterotter, or OtterOtter - I've never actually written it down before. I really don't know where that name came from. None of my other plush have that repetition in their name. I just like the way it sounds perhaps. Anyway, he's Been with me since San Francisco 1997. Here he is yesterday in Tasmania. This turned out not to be a standard Wild Plush shoot...

For a long time I'd been thinking that I ought to do a plush shoot with Otterotter, and that it obviously ought to be by the water. So I drove upriver a few miles and found a nice rock by the river edge, which sloped down into the water. I sat him down maybe 1.5 metres from where the rock met the river, looking out across to the far bank. The way he was facing he was close to the water, but perched safely above it. There were no waves. It was a river, after all. Perfect place for a river otter. I backed off a good distance to use the telephoto lens.

And then this thing came upriver, rather fast

I casually took this snap of it; this is at 450mm equivalent, so it's actually hundreds of metres away. I didn't think about it again. I had the camera nearly down on the ground taking the main photo of Otterotter, and when I stood up I saw this wave coming towards the rock. It took me a second or two to process that there was a wave rushing toward the bank of a previously placid river - much later I realised it was the bow-wave of the ship - but I lurched off Otterwards, still assuming it would spend itself before it got to him. In micro tsunami fashion though, it ran right up the rock and washed him towards the shore. Which was fairly ok, but before I got there, it started rolling back, and took him with it and dumped him off the edge of the rock into the river.

About another second or two and I would have had to jump in, but I managed to grab him without having to resort to that.

He dried out by evening with remarkably little trouble, and naturally enjoyed himself immensely.

Description

My Cascade Otter, who I call Otter-Otter, or possibly Otterotter, or OtterOtter - I've never actually written it down before. I really don't know where that name came from. None of my other plush have that repetition in their name. I just like the way it sounds perhaps. Anyway, he's Been with me since San Francisco 1997. Here he is yesterday in Tasmania. This turned out not to be a standard Wild Plush shoot...

For a long time I'd been thinking that I ought to do a plush shoot with Otterotter, and that it obviously ought to be by the water. So I drove upriver a few miles and found a nice rock by the river edge, which sloped down into the water. I sat him down maybe 1.5 metres from where the rock met the river, looking out across to the far bank. The way he was facing he was close to the water, but perched safely above it. There were no waves. It was a river, after all. Perfect place for a river otter. I backed off a good distance to use the telephoto lens.

And then this thing came upriver, rather fast

I casually took this snap of it; this is at 450mm equivalent, so it's actually hundreds of metres away. I didn't think about it again. I had the camera nearly down on the ground taking the main photo of Otterotter, and when I stood up I saw this wave coming towards the rock. It took me a second or two to process that there was a wave rushing toward the bank of a previously placid river - much later I realised it was the bow-wave of the ship - but I lurched off Otterwards, still assuming it would spend itself before it got to him. In micro tsunami fashion though, it ran right up the rock and washed him towards the shore. Which was fairly ok, but before I got there, it started rolling back, and took him with it and dumped him off the edge of the rock into the river.

About another second or two and I would have had to jump in, but I managed to grab him without having to resort to that.

He dried out by evening with remarkably little trouble, and naturally enjoyed himself immensely.