Breaching humpback whale, Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska.
Even though I have seen humpback whales leap out of the water many times over the years – it still blows me away seeing such a massive animal coming so far out of the water! The sight and sound is awesome!
I took a bit of a chance holding the camera in a vertical position – I think it better frames the action, but makes it harder to find and frame the animal in the limited amount of time you have while they are in the air.
This was with a Canon 7D with a 70-200 plus a 2x converter which I didn’t really need as this was captured at a focal length of 140mm at f/5.6 and 1/1250 of a second, ISO 800. This was during my photo tour about a week ago.
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Great shot Ron..love it!! Wish we could have captured a couple of these on the tour last year, but sounds like our weather was better. How did you manage to have the camera pointed in the right place? Had he breached before so you could anticipate another?
A friend of mine just came back from her first ever whale watch cruise in Victoria. She was proudly showing me her photos of humpback whales. And then I showed her this photo–she’s convinced you have some secret bonding with animals to always wind up with shots like this!
Holy cow, is this where you worry if you’re in a small boat? Very nice catch.
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Thanks a lot everyone!
@ Ron Thanks! Yes, we had much better weather for your trip, but better whales for this one. If you look close here I think you can see it is pouring rain!
This guy was breaching in roughly the same area, but it was still a matter of having the camera ready and trying to frame and focus as it was coming out of the water and still in the air. Fortunately I have a number of chances at as I missed many!
@Scott It really has been a great whale year here – and I was a bit lucky! Thanks!
@David. Thanks. This was a 43 foot boat, so safer then in the boats I’m usually in. I have heard of them landing on boat in Southeast.
Great capture Ron!
Always beautiful and amazing seeing these big guys breach.
Looks like they like the bad weather better. 🙂
See any baby calves with them?
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@ Wayne I agree – I think they seem to prefer bad weather. Didn’t see calves with these guys. Thanks!