It's Curtains for You...

It's Curtains for You...

When photographing whales from above the surface of the water, you have to accept that you're going to see your subjects for only about 10% or less of your total "contact" time with them and end up bearing witness to only a narrow portion of their total behavioural repertoire. When it comes to Humpback Whales, that means you generally have 3 categories of things to shoot - breaches, feeding (including bubble-netting and lunge feeding), and tail shots.

While it is almost impossible for a keen nature photographer NOT to photograph ANY whale tail you see (and usually while blazing away at the highest frame rate your camera can muster!), after looking at about 1000 or so of the tail shots I have in my collection I have come to this conclusion: if you're shooting in a place where whales are common, it is REALLY, REALLY easy to end up with a tons (literally) of quite boring tail shots! You know, stuff that you (the photographer) like, but quickly puts an audience to sleep!

When I critiqued my own whale tail collection, I noticed a few things that made some of the images interesting to me. First, in the right conditions the trailing edge of the tail can produce a very visually interesting "curtain" of water draining off the flukes - almost like a waterfall or cascading rapids. In most situations the curtain is quite incomplete and not too interesting, but once in a while you get a nearly complete curtain. Second, if the ambient light is just right (and usually this means overcast skies) the water on the surface of the whale reflects just the right amount of light to accentuate interesting textures in the skin. These reflections can lead to a high-contrast image that definitely grabs one's eye. And, last but not least, sometimes individual-specific anomalies on the whale's tail - everything from striking patterns and/or scars and even the presence of barnacles living on the edges of the flukes - can increase the visual interest of tail shot.

So...in the autumn of 2011 I went on my photo tour into the Great Bear Rainforest vowing to be more selective and discerning in my shooting of humpback tails. Was I successful? Well...partly. I still took about a billion shots of those pesky tails (they're just SO seductive and compelling to shoot!). BUT, I did pay particular attention to lighting and "curtain patterns" and ensured I didn't miss those opportunities. In the case of this shot it meant that recognizing that it was critical to losing NONE of the highlight details in the curtain of water streaming off the tail. Which meant a major under-exposure of the scene (relative to the "suggested" exposure of a camera's light meter) - here it was -1.67 stops. It also meant choosing a shutter speed that was pretty much guaranteed to "freeze" the streaming water (1/1250s). And, I now finally have a few humpback tail shots in my collection that are not quite as likely to bore viewers completely to death!

Subject: Humpback Whale (Megaptera novaeagnliae) diving deep
Location: Waters of Great Bear Rainforest, BC, Canada
Camera: Nikon D3s
Lens: Nikkor 400mm f2.8 VRII lens - hand-held from deck of sailboat
Exposure: 1/1250s @ f5; ISO 1100. -1.67 stop compensation from matrix-metered exposure setting.
Crop: Very minor horizontally (this is about 90% of width of original image) - more cropped off top and bottom for pano aspect ratio

NOTE: This is not a B&W conversion - the scene was extremely monochromatic and the only colour I removed was a very faint green tinge that the water in the foreground had (which was selectively desaturated).

As usual, more info about this shot (including processing details) available right here:

http://www.naturalart.ca/galleries/latest/.

Comments and critiques welcomed - probably best to view the larger version prior to doing so!

Cheers...thanks for looking...

Brad