by Bryan Grundy
This week's theme prompted me to make my first post as I though this photo was quite appropriate. I took this from aboard a sailboat travelling along British Columbia's Great Bear Rainforest. This humpback entertained us for a while as it repeatedly bubble-netted for schooling fish. If you're not familiar with bubble-netting the following may be informative. If you look closely you can see the bubble-net, a ring of bubbles surrounding the whale, which the whale released from its blowhole some dozens of meters beneath the surface. The rising bubbles formed a cylinder, effectively trapping the schooling fish and allowing the whale to swim up through the cylinder and swallow the fish. This appears to be a learned behavior that not all humpbacks exhibit.
This was one of the first images of the whale that I captured and wasn't quite ready--my shutter speed was linked to focal length, which resutled in a shutter speed that, unfortunately, wasn't quite fast enough to freeze the ends of the whale's jaws and pectoral fin.
D600, 80-400mm @ 80mm and f7.1, ISO 220, SS 1/80th, handheld
Comments
5 commentsWelcome to NPN, Bryan. This is a fine first post. Love all of the greys and the pano crop. I'll bet nobody this week can challenge you for biggest mouth,
. At the size displayed, I don't see the softness. It's neat to see the bubbles with the whales in the middle.
Welcome to NPN. Must have been exciting to get this close. I like the pano crop. Good behavioral shot.
Very cool image showing the bubble-netting behavior nicely Bryan.
Like Mark, I think the layers of grey make the comp great. Maybe next time you could post the larger version well.. larger?
Welcome to NPN
I think you captured the action quite nicely, Bryan! It's surprisingly sharp for a shutter speed of 1/80! The crop works very well for this scene, especially since it's obvious that you had quite a bit of dead space above and below due to fog and water. A rare opportunity to witness this and even better to have captured a very good photo of the action! It's a great choice for the challenge and an excellent first post. Welcome to NPN
Thanks for the comments and the welcome!
Gary you're right about the dead space--I cropped a lot of fog off the top and a bit of water off the bottom. It is the full width of the original capture.