Wednesday, April 8, 2009

365 Theme 341: Two


Humpbacked whales, mom and calf, along with an entourage of watchers. This image was taken on the balcony of our hotel in Cabo and the whales were quite a distance form us. Other then the whale shown in the Sunday Six set for March 29th, these are the only whales I've  ever seen. Last year we say none, but this year we saw plenty of spouts in the distance but these were the only ones close enough to really see. (Larger version here.)

4 comments:

Kerri said...

So neat! I've never seen whales either, at least outside an aquarium. Great choice for the theme

Chesney said...

This definitely needs to be enlarged to appreciate it's full beauty! You captured this brilliantly right down to the sparkles in the water! Nice!

Ron a.k.a. Danudin said...

Here in Australia the police would ask for the raw photo, and prosecute the living dailights out of all those, boats. By Law if a whale is within 200 metres (215 yards) the motor must be turned off, if the motor can't be turned off for safety sakes the vessel MUST vacate the vicinity of the whale. WHALES HAVE RIGHT OF WAY! I love watching them from the shore.

MevetS said...

@ Ron: While Mexico has similar laws they clearly don't enforce them. This area is supposedly a marine sanctuary, but I didn't see a single official vessel patrolling the entire week. One thing to consider though is that I was quite a distance away and shooting at a focal length of 560 mm (400 mm lens plus 1.4x teleconverter). This would compress the apparent distance in the radial direction, so the boats may not be as close as they appear in the image (see the Fences post for an example of the effect).