A Lazy Lunch

A Lazy Lunch!

Another one from my August Aquatic Mammals Photo Tour (more informally known as my "Slippery, Slimy Mammals" Tour ).

Watching a humpback whale feed is normally not lacking in drama - both bubble-netting feeding and the related lunge-feeding involve dramatic and often unexpected "explosions" of activity on the surface of the water. But this humpback seems to have decided that a lazier approach was more to its suiting! Instead of energetically lungeing into a school of fish and then straining a huge mouthful of water and food bits through its baleen plates, this innovative thinker decided to just go to the surface, open its mouth wide open, and just drift (for a LONG time)! Now I don't know if this lollygagger met with much (or any) success, but there's no doubt he/she burnt a LOT less energy feeding than its colleagues do. Kinda reminds me of Fat Bastard (from Austin Powers fame) saying "Get into my belly!"

There's a challenge in making some images of humpbacks really effective that's more-or-less inherent to the subject matter (and little can be done about it). Unless you catch an "iconic" view of a humpback whale (so a tail, perhaps a blow spout as the whale exhales, or a breach), then honest viewers often say (or think) "Ok...just what am I actually looking at?"

Well... to answer THAT question, here's what you're looking at: On the left is the upper jaw and you're looking at the inside of it. The pink thing is the palette (think "roof of the mouth"). The brown fibrous things on either side of the pink palette are the ends of the baleen plates (the "food strainers") that are actually arranged in parallel but because the ends are a bit frayed they don't really appear that way. And, on the right is the lower jaw. Out of view (below the lower jaw) are the many pleats which allow the mouth and throat to greatly expand to take on a HUGE volume of water.

Subject: One lazy Humpback Whale (Megaptera novaeagnliae)
Location:Blackfish Sound (northern Vancouver Island), BC, Canada
Camera: Nikon D4
Lens: AF-S Nikkor 400mm f2.8 VR - hand-held from floating sailboat. VR on and in "Normal" mode.
Exposure: 1/1250s @ f8; ISO 450. -0.33 stop compensation compensation from matrix-metered exposure setting.
Crop: This is pretty much full frame (at least 95%).

As always, there's a whole lot more background info about this image - on my website, including in this case a 2400 pixel version of it (under the "In the Field" tab if you follow the link below) - just go here:

http://www.naturalart.ca/galleries/latest/detail_2.html.

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

Cheers...

Brad