(bright music) - [Announcer] Here's "A Little Something About San Diego" with Ken Kramer.

(bright music continues) - [Narrator] If you take pictures for a living and the pictures you take end up on the front page of The "San Diego Union Tribune," "New York Times," "The Washington Post," Wall Street Journal," then you are a good photographer.

And Sandy Huffaker is very good.

- I've been around the globe and to Peru and Haiti, all around Europe, of course, a lot down in Mexico.

- [Narrator] His dad was a brilliant political cartoonist, and for a while Sandy thought he'd try to follow in his footsteps, but when he got a camera for Christmas one year, that was it.

- And just fell in love with the culture and photographing and documenting all kind of different peoples.

- [Narrator] He's covered immigration, border issues, civil unrest, wildfires.

His work is just extraordinary.

- But now I walk around town and, oh, the seal guy, you're the sea lion guy.

- [Narrator] The sea lion guy.

Sure, he spent time in Brazil, in the Caribbean, covered conflicts and hotspots around the world, but it is in La Jolla Cove mostly where Sandy Huffaker found this remarkable specialty.

- And I just decided on a whim to find this underwater housing right here and kind of go take pictures.

I had a lot of time.

Most of my work had fallen off due to COVID.

- [Narrator] His love of snorkeling and photography quickly led to a love for these sea lions and seals in a protected marine sanctuary like La Jolla Cove where people can swim with them, respectfully.

- I have actually never touched one, and I will not do that.

I'm an observer of these sea lions and I'm not there to touch or pat or do anything, but just observe and photograph them.

- [Narrator] He says it helps that he's always been able to hold his breath for a long time.

He goes underwater, grabs hold of a rock.

And he's in their world, on their terms.

- One of the neat things with the sea lions is they have such a really adorable kind of natural curiosity, and you'll dive down and they'll see you and as you look up, they're usually right in your face and they're kinda looking at you like, what are you doing?

They have a really neat natural curiosity.

And then I'll start taking pictures and they'll swim around you.

They'll spit a bubble at you every once in a while, and I think for a minute they think you're one of them until they see how slow you are.

- [Narrator] They swirl around him with astonishing agility and a gracefulness that you don't see on land.

Out here in their territory, he is a grateful guest.

For Sandy, this place, these experiences have been in their own way healing.

- It was a very tense time for a photojournalist being in the media.

You're getting screamed at a lot, yelled at.

There was just a lot of anger and political tension going on.

- [Narrator] He found his visits out here to be calming and like any good photographer in time developed a rapport with his subjects.

Only here, there's no setup shots.

You can't pose a sea lion.

- So slowly I've learned how to kind of give them the space they need and then to where they just kind of ignore you and they play on their own.

- [Narrator] The beauty is in simply letting them be.

- And it's a really amazing thing.

I mean, most of the time we see 'em in a zoo, we see 'em with glass in between.

The fact that you can go out and swim with these wild native sea lions is a beautiful thing.

It's really interesting.

- [Narrator] And for Sandy Huffaker, page one, internationally renowned photographer, it's something else too.

A career turn born of a COVID downturn.

Who could have seen that coming a few years ago?

Now there's a calendar, perhaps one day, a book, whatever else around the world he has documented in photographs, he is now also San Diego's sea lion guy.

And to him, that's just fine.

- If that's on my gravestone, that's okay.

We all have to be known as something.

(gentle music) (bright music) (light music) (hinge squeaking) - [Narrator] This place is so gentle on the senses, so peaceful, a wind swept grassland filled with the sounds and sweet smells that depending on where you look, could have been cut and pasted from the Great Plains of America.

(light music continues) Let's take a walk through the Ramona Grasslands County Preserve.

A vast and panoramic view spread out before us, under a smiling sky, it somehow just recharges the soul.

(light music continues) (insects chirping) It is really a remarkable thing.

3,521 acres (gentle music) of picture postcard beauty.

(water babbling) I found myself thinking, really, this is in San Diego County.

(gentle music continues) There are two trails connected by a third for walking, cycling, horses.

(hooves clopping) So many different moods depending on the seasons of the year.

There are pools formed by the Santa Maria Creek.

(water trickling) (gentle music continues) A serene place of shrubs, oak trees, and grass that is home to 408 different plant species.

(gentle music continues) Out there are 23 different kinds of butterfly, more than a hundred types of birds.

And whatever I encountered seemed to be at peace.

(wind blowing) (gentle music continues) Spring and summer days can be hot, you wanna carry water, make sure somebody's with you or knows where you are.

(gentle music continues) And open your senses to this treasure of open space in the Santa Maria Valley, off Highland Valley Road.

(bright music) (water flowing) (ground crunching) (bright music continues) A walk around the trails of the Ramona Grasslands County Preserve, something wonderfully calming and yet breathtaking about San Diego.

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