Some of my favorite images from a recent trip this fall to photograph orcas in the fjords of Norway in the arctic circle. Cold temps, northern lights, hundreds of orcas, short days, humbpacks, and seemingly billions of herring in bait balls, made for an epic trip and fantastic, albeit challenging, photography.
One of my favorite shots, a bull orca herding a schooling bait ball of herring. The orca would flash it’s white underside to steer the herring, they would panic and swim in a tight circle as the orcas swam circles around them. Then they would selectively pick off the ones they wanted to eat.
This humpback whale calf was incredibly playful and inquisitive. Even getting rowdy at one point swimming directly at us and then veering off. Clearly having a great time entertaining itself with us while its mother rested below, she seemed to be quite thankful she had found a babysitter to entertain her rambunctious child.
Bull humpback whale surfaces and blows right at the front of the boat during a heat run. It smelled REALLY bad…Sequence of a humpback whale breach.Two humpbacks surface at sunset.Sunset light illuminates a lone humpback surfacing.Sunsets on the open ocean are always amazing!
This winter I had the opportunity to visit Yosemite for a brief trip to photograph the spectacular Firefall. I had planned for a full week of hiking, camping, and photography at Yosemite. Unfortunately mother nature had other plans. I was able to spend two amazing days there, and then a massive snowstorm blew in. The park service did a mandatory evactuation of all the campgrounds. I ended up leaving while it was dumping snow, and it didn’t let up for several days. They ended up fully closing the park for more than a week. With dynamic weather always comes the potential for dynamic lighting conditions, and those definitely didn’t disappoint.
Glacier Peaks Wilderness in Washington had long been on my list, but I’d never taken the opportunity to go explore it before. This summer one of my buddies and I took a 63 mile backcountry loop through a section of it. Pretty amazing scenery throughout. Wildfires and bald blue skies made for less than epic photography, but the backpacking was amazing.
Finally some new images up for the remainder of my trips in 2017. Ended up taking the family with me to Tetons, Yellowstone, and Glacier. As a result the photography wasn’t quite as intense as usual, as I took it relatively easy hiking my family all over the national parks. They handled it like champs. Of course the awesome views in Glacier have a tendency to make the effort all melt away. Have some more hard core backpacking and photo trips planned for 2018.
Close up of the moose chilling on the banks of Lower Grinnell Lake, GNP. Unfortunately no grizz, only moose, mountain goats, big horn sheep, marmots, and one grumpy badger.
I recently had the opportunity to travel to the Big Island of Hawaii. The intent was to spend a week shooting the active lava delta flowing into the ocean. Unfortunately that delta collapsed and sank into the ocean shortly before I got there. So I scrambled for alternate plans. I still got some shots of the volcano thanks to my friend Bruce Omori at Extreme Exposure in Hilo. Ultimately the change in plans gave me the opportunity to try some underwater photography.
