Category: National Forest

Here is another amazing humpback whale breach that I photographed during my July trip in Southeast Alaska. Breaching whale encounters never get old. I wish that I could photograph whales every day, but for a variety of reasons it would be impractical, least of which is that they don’t cooperate like this very often. This juvenile humpback probably breached close to 100 times over the 2+ hours that I spent photographing it. This gave me ample time to maneuver my inflatable into position with the sunlight at the best angle and with the most pleasing mountains in the background. I did not anticipate where the whale was going to breach correctly every time, but when I did, I was rewarded with images like this one. The hardest part of photographing breaches is having my camera pointed in the right direction and responding fast enough before the entire moment is over. I used my Canon 7D and 70-200mm f2.8 IS lens with a shutter speed of 1/1300 second to stop the action.

For marine mammal photographers like myself, photographing whale tails is not that hard to do, but creating a striking image is. This is the only part of the animal that most whale watchers will ever see. It’s not the most dramatic behavior, and certainly nowhere near as photogenic as a full body breach. Over the years, I have taken tens of thousands of whale tail images. I am grateful that I no longer have to spend money on film since most of these images are utterly useless and unworthy of even the 1 second of my time that it takes for me to hit the delete button. Still, every once in a while I photograph a nice tail, like this one. Here’s how the sequence of events needs to work in order to create an image like this. A whale has to surface within a few hundred yards of my boat. It will normally take 3-5 breaths on the surface before diving, which might give me enough time to close the distance on the tail and take up a position behind the whale, not slightly to the left or right, but directly behind it. When the whale begins its dive, there is usually 1 image where the tail is almost at its apex and water is pouring off of it. I am also ever vigilant for a pleasing background, like these snow capped peaks and non-distracting blue mountains in the distance. The entire image has to come together, not just any one part. You can also see other whale photos when you visit my whale photo galleries.

Another freakin’ humpback whale breaching photo? Well, yes, it is! I normally prefer breaching images at the peak of the whale’s trajectory, because they don’t appear as powerful in the limp-coming back down phase, let alone when the big splash happens. However, what I do like about this image is that it shows the power of the whale’s tail propelling it almost completely out of the water. You can see that there is very little of the whale still connected to the surface. I had to keep moving my inflatable for safety, but I also wanted to keep the whale on the inside of me in order to photograph it against the pretty blue mountains in the distance. See more photos of humpback whales.