A Whale of a good time

[jude01]

I spent this weekend fishing up in Ucluelet, well I was really there to drive the boat (and look for whales)! Both days we were there is was overcast, foggy, with blinding white sky's( my curse!)

I'm going to start with the pics from the second day, it was a bit brighter this day and my auto focus was fast enough I could still use it with some success

what you typically see from the boat


we were fortunate enough that this whale decided to swim between our boat and another in front of us





now on the first day, we could see tonnes of whales in the distance so we decided to keep our eye out for any closer to get a pic of on our way back from fishing. well one breached to our left so we turned that way and all of a sudden 3 surfaced in front of us. we stopped the boat and they then surfaced right beside us!!!!! It was darker this day so auto focus was not working. I had about 5 seconds to switch to manual and crank the lens from 250mm back down to 55mm and managed to still get these shots




No joke these guys were about 10 feet from the boat...one of the greatest animal moments of my life!!!

[Hillbillygirl]

Now that would be awesome, really cool shots Jude. Love how you can even see the texture of the skin in last two shots. Thanks for sharing these.

[Iguanasan]

Really cool. Must be quite a sight to see.

[asnow]

Cool pictures. Also sounds like a fun time being able to go out driving a boat looking for whales.