Whale Watching

“So, the first thing I learned about whale-watching is that if you try to spot them looking through a viewfinder…you likely won’t. It’s not easy to turn to where someone has pointed out the whale, and at 30x telephoto actually get it into the picture before its gone. And hand-held small cameras with that much zoom, on a moving boat, tend to miss the next shot, too. Once I stopped trying for the picture and started looking for the eyeful instead, it got better.”

“The day of my tour was an overcast, fog-filled, and windy afternoon. Nonetheless, I was incredibly excited to see what marine creatures might emerge from the coastal mist and stepped foot on my first whale-watching boat. Within minutes of leaving the dock, a group of bottlenose dolphins began to follow us, performing magnificent leaps out of the water using our boat’s wake as an aquatic ramp. I rushed to the stern to try and capture some close-up action shots with my 300mm 2.8 lens as they emerged from the frigid water at high speeds.”

“I went into it with no real expectations - of course I was excited about the chance to see some marine life, but I wasn't really sure what to expect. Seeing that first group of humpback whales was amazing. It's impossible to grasp just how big and majestic they are until you see them in person! It's almost hard to believe they're real the first time you see them.”