Humpback Whales at Yaquina Head

Bringing my 400mm lens and EOS 7 to Yaquina Head the next day made it possible to get shots of the Humpback whales that I couldn’t capture the day before.  In fact, my greatest problem was trying to decide which shots to keep and which shots to delete. 

Here’s a long shot of the female Humpback whale and her calf.  The gash on the back of the mother positively identifies her as the whale that was here the day before.  In fact, the BLM Ranger told us that this same whale has shown up with ac calf for thirteen straight years.  They speculate that she is old enough that the wound on her back is from a  harpoon, which would mean that she is quite old because Humpback whales haven’t been hunted for several years. 

I’ll have to admit that seeing the whales in person was much more exciting than the shots convey.  I was pretty thrilled with this sequence of shots when I took it.  

Sitting in front of my computer, I’m definitely not as impressed as I was taking the shots; I’m even less impressed when I look at images on the web and see pictures of Humpback whales jumping out of the water.  Still, it’s precisely those images that make it such a thrill to see the whales yourself.

This calf seemed huge even in the distance,

but not nearly as huge as this female looked when she came in amazingly close to the shore.  

I’ll have to admit, though, that I regretted that I hadn’t brought my 500mm lens with the doubler to see what kind of shots I could have captured.  

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