My normal work routine this week was disrupted in the best way possible - I took Wednesday off to go out whalewatching with Gotham Whale, along with my friend Louise from Ithaca. Great way to spend a Wednesday!
Louise is an Antarctic kayak guide with Oceanwide Expeditions for part of the year - she loves taking people out to see the whales during the Antarctic summer (our winter) and she was absolutely amazed one day when I shared some particularly spectacular photos that Artie Raslich, Gotham Whale's official photographer, had taken on a recent whalewatching cruise on the American Princess and posted on Facebook. "I need to come see this!", she said, and then a few minutes later she followed up with something along the lines of "No, really, I'm serious!". Turned out she'd had some errands she'd been thinking of running in my neck of the woods and that a whalewatching/errand combo was going to work out perfectly, so we picked a day and made it happen.
Turned out to be the first day in a long time when the humpbacks hadn't appeared, but it was a lovely day out on the water, it was such fun being able to introduce Louise to the Gotham Whale folks. It was also a particular pleasure to finally meet Gotham Whale's founder, Paul Sieswerda, who I've known online for years but never actually run into in person, and towards the end of the trip, our captain found a HUGE pod of dolphins for us, which were pretty amazing to watch.
Click here for a full photo trip report on Flickr. What a terrific day!
Want to hear/read a little more about Louise's summer(winter) job? There's a nice interview with her (and a link to her own blog) on Ithaca's Walk in the Park blog.
4 comments:
Great pics. We went whale watching a few years back in Boston but our pictures sucked. I can't explain it. There were tons of whales (literally, I guess) but every single picture turned out horrible, so we eventually gave up and just watched the whales.
They suck at posing.
Awww! Thanks! With an estimated sixty dolphins, half of which were splashing on the surface most of the time, and me taking a hundred or more pix, I was bound to get a few decent ones
It is REALLY hard to get a good shot of a whale, the time I went out on the American Princess it seemed like my reflexes were just too slow and all my shots were of the literal tail end of exciting leaps and lunges. That's why it's great having a professional photographer that goes on all the trips - you know he's gonna get all the stuff you missed! :D
Beautiful pictures, I'm glad you had a good time.
It was great! I'm so glad Louise really stepped up to make this happen, I could so easily have thought about doing this right up until October when the whales have wandered on their way.
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