Better results than I have had on my two trips. Someone who has never gone may expect a constant series of the whales popping out of the water. What more often occurs is that you find a couple of whales (three or four can be lucky in my experience) who will surface to breathe on average three times and then dive deep for several minutes. Then your boat tries to guess where they will come up at again. The tail flip is usually only on the final breath before submerging. In the interest of not disturbing the whales, boats (at least here in California) are required not to get too close or in the way of the whales. We do always seem to have dolphins who swim along with our boat each time. The best advice is to try to anticipate and have your camera all set. Using a burst of shots can help too.
The more famous shot of them breaching out of the water and then crashing down is pretty rare on the open seas. If you go to their calving grounds (like in Baja California- the Sea of Cortez on the west coast) you may be more likely to catch one. [/url]
Better results than I have had on my two trips. Someone who has never gone may expect a constant series of the whales popping out of the water. What more often occurs is that you find a couple of whales (three or four can be lucky in my experience) who will surface to breathe on average three times and then dive deep for several minutes. Then your boat tries to guess where they will come up at again. The tail flip is usually only on the final breath before submerging. In the interest of not disturbing the whales, boats (at least here in California) are required not to get too close or in the way of the whales. We do always seem to have dolphins who swim along with our boat each time. The best advice is to try to anticipate and have your camera all set. Using a burst of shots can help too.
The more famous shot of them breaching out of the water and then crashing down is pretty rare on the open seas. If you go to their calving grounds (like in Baja California- the Sea of Cortez on the west coast) you may be more likely to catch one.
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Yeah, there were a lot of people on the boat that didn't seem to understand that once they go under the water you really don't know where they are going lol. They kept mouthing off asking why the captain was going away from where the whales were. Like the captain has never done this before and they do it all the time...made the trip a pain but the whales made up for it big time.
I did have my camera on burst with over 3 megs of card space and two batteries. I'm really hoping to go on another trip in a couple weeks with a different company to see how it goes. We did get a couple breach out but never where I had the camera pointing (typical) lol.
You were luckier than me. I went whale watching, it was expensive, the boat was crowded and I got no good shots. I'm in Hawaii so it's a big tourist attraction. What a waste of money.
Come to San Diego next time. You can go out for as little as $15 and they guarantee that if you don't see any you get a free return ticket. You can also go on a boat that was in the America's Cup race for $75 if you want. These are about four hour tours. You can also do them all the way down to Mexico to the spaning grounds. Those are five days I think. [/url]
Come to San Diego next time. You can go out for as little as $15 and they guarantee that if you don't see any you get a free return ticket. You can also go on a boat that was in the America's Cup race for $75 if you want. These are about four hour tours. You can also do them all the way down to Mexico to the spaning grounds. Those are five days I think.
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Thanks for the idea, I doubt I'll ever make it back to Cali but will remember that if I ever do.
As promised here are other images, I posted on my website to save space on here. Some are a little blurry (hard to control with the rolling of the boat lol) and since I'm not real good as post processing some may need a little more work. enjoy
