Alaska is known as The Last Frontier, and for those that have visited, it’s easy to see why. As Lindblad Expeditions’ former Director of Photography, travel photographer Ralph Lee Hopkins has photographed Alaska dozens of times in his career.
A photographer has captured the incredible moment a humpback whale breaches close to a boat in Coffs Harbour in New South Wales, Australia.
Photographer Kurt Arrigo has wanted to free dive with humpback whales since he was 10 years old. 40 years later, he finally got the opportunity to make that dream a reality.
A photographer was on a whale-watching trip when he unexpectedly captured incredible photos of a large humpback whale exploding out of the water right next to an unsuspecting fisherman on his boat.
Two kayakers on a whale watching adventure off the coast of California got a scare on Monday when a humpback whale came up from below and nearly swallowed them. One of the kayakers had her phone out at the time and managed to capture the experience on camera.
Last month, wildlife photographer Chase Dekker captured an incredible moment on camera. While he was photographing humpback whales lunge feeding on Monterey Bay, he captured the moment when an unlucky sea lion got trapped inside a whale's mouth.
"Giants" is a beautiful set of black-and-white underwater photos by Australian photographer Jem Cresswell that offers an intimate look at the beauty of humpback whales.
Australian photographer Beau Pilgrim got the surprise of a lifetime recently when an adult humpback whale breached right in front of him, landing just a couple of meters away from the swimming photographer. Fortunately for us, he captured the incredible moment on video.
The squeaks and grunts whales make are still mysterious, but at least now we know what whale-speak is for "Get that thing out of my face!" That would be thanks to diver/photographer Chris Coates, who had a close encounter of the paparazzi kind while observing humpback whales off the eastern coast of Africa recently.
If you're afraid of swimming in the ocean due to a fear of the unknown below you, you might want to skip over the post. A group of divers off the coast of California got a scare recently when they had an extremely close call with large humpback whales. They almost found themselves in the mouths of the feeding whales, and multiple cameras were there to capture what happened (note: the video above contains some strong language).
Want to photograph or film a humpback whale underwater? Try listening for its "song." The video above, uploaded by YouTube user westh2o, shows a surprise underwater encounter he and a group of divers had with a large humpback whale back in October 2011 (the actual encounter is at 3m20s).
While working as a fishing guide in Tofino, British Columbia, Matthew Thornton captured this wild photograph of a humpback whale calf leaping out of the water an extremely short distance away (estimated at 10-30 feet). In his submission to the National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest, Thornton writes,
On our way in from fishing for halibut we noticed a few humpback whales playing in the distance and we stopped part way in to watch. It was quite an experience to see something completely airborne so close to the boat. The lucky thing was I got the photo I submitted. A fellow boat also got a picture of the whale close to mid air and it was also all caught on video. Was an amazing day.