Blue whale flukes before diving deep

With all the blue whale mania off the coast of Los Angeles and more specifically near Redondo Beach, I’ve been fortunate to have the chance to serve as a naturalist on a few whale watching trips. I always take my camera along hoping for the best shot ever, but since I’m not a professional photographer I usually go home and sort through all the photos on my computer and am lucky to end up with 10 good shots out of 300.

Digital cameras are a true blessing for whale watching photography because I can just delete all the bad ones. I’m so glad I wasn’t into taking photos of whales during the days of film because I would have wasted so much money on photos of water and blurry whales.

So I have to share with you my new favorite whale photo. This is a photo of a blue whale fluking before heading to deeper waters. Now you probably think I picked this photo because the water is running off the flukes. But that is only part of the reason. The real reason I picked this photo is because the horizon is almost straight in the background! For me this is a real victory.

Taking photos on a boat is a true challenge. Since I started trying to capture whales on film, I mean on SanDisk, I have a new found respect for all whale and dolphin photos. Usually the boat is rocking up and down, sometimes it’s crazy windy and you have to make sure your camera doesn’t get soaked and usually the whale is up and back in the water before you even have a chance to look through the lens. Needless to say I’m usually just happy to even get a photo of a whale. But now that I have captured an almost straight horizon, now I must aim even higher! An in focus whale with a straight horizon! That will be the day. (By the way, my photo is the real deal, no photoshop! If I owned photoshop, then I could just fix the horizon, but where’s the fun in that?!)