It was the end of December, 2004, and we were on the trip to Maui that the owner of the company I work for had surprised the staff with for New Year’s. The ex-Mrs. Farrago and I went on a whale watching tour, and the whales weren’t in much of a mood to be watched. We had seen a couple of tail flukes and a couple of spouts up close, but no full breaches.
I manned the video camera while xMrs. Farrago wielded the trusty Nikon D70 we had purchased just a few months earlier. The boat captain tried several different viewing sites, but we were witnessing lethargic whales.
Then a whale near the boat broke the surface, first with a spout, and then with a roll of its massive body at the surface. It was really the same as all the others, just offering us a glimpse of its black body slipping along the surface. At the sound of the spout I had spun the video camera around and had barely caught the glimpse of the whale’s body as it slid barely into view. Just as I was pressing the record button to stop recording, I saw in the viewfinder, in the distance beyond the whale-bit that was still peeking above the water’s surface, a full breach by another whale! Everyone else on the boat who saw it let out a cheer at having seen it. I said to xMrs. Farrago, “Did you see that?”
She said, “Yeah, I saw it…and I think I captured it!!”
She didn’t know how to view the shot, so I helped her scroll back to it in the camera's playback mode. She had been shooting multiple exposure bursts, so there were a few shots to go through to get to it.
She had indeed captured the breach! Because the lens is a fairly wide-angle, 18-70mm zoom, the breaching whale is very tiny in the shot. When we got back to the hotel room, xMrs. Farrago enlarged the shot and, thanks to the good resolution of the Nikon D70, even enlarged, the shot looks pretty good! Click either photo to see it whale-sized.
Take a gander over at Written, Inc., and follow the links to his other readers.
And thanks for spending some time here.
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6 comments:
just a spine tingler that one!
Very cool. I've been looking thru my pics for a 'surprise' but haven't found one yet to post.
Now that was amazing!! Too bad it wasn't closer to you.
I went whale watching a few times and it's so hard to capture on film- nice!
These are simply stupendous. What a moment when you realize not only what's happened, but that it's safely tucked into your memory card!
You've inspired me to share my spontaneous dolphin experience. Nowhere near as spine-tingling as this, but still worthy of a quick share.
Very cool!
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