Tonga 2019

There is only one Wonderland, but let's also talk about and share photos of other national parks.

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Max
Posts: 195
Joined: Sun Jul 23, 2017 12:27 pm

Tonga 2019

Post by Max »

I thought I had shared these photos here, but I guess I forgot.

In August, Jenn and I went to Tonga to swim with humpback whales. It's a trip I'd been planning for some time, but then was forced to reschedule from October because of the WPY stuff. The trip was a lot of fun, though going earlier probably affected our visibility quite a bit. It was very challenging to come up with decent pictures because of the amount of particles (mainly blooming algae) in the water... plus, the whales move really fast and I'm not a great underwater photographer!

I posted a small gallery of pictures on my website. A short preview is below.

One of our early encounters, which does a pretty good job showing how close a whale can swim to you. This fin was inches away from my camera. You can also see how much algae was in the water at times.
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Our best encounters were on Day 1...
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...which also happened to be our only day swimming with moms and calves.
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In addition to humpbacks, we were fortunate to swim with two species of dolphins, a sailfish, a silky shark, and a pod of false killer whales (shown here).
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Converting images to black and white actually helps quite a bit with getting rid of some of the particles and noise. And it can often enhance the dramatic tones of an image.
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On one of our late swims, we were swimming above a pair of whales that were apparently sleeping on the bottom, when one suddenly gave two quick flicks of its tail and zoomed toward the surface. I had envisioned this moment prior to the trip, so I followed it up and thrust the camera out of the water as it breached. Despite a partially-fogged dome, this shot actually came out!
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View the full Tonga 2019 gallery here.

Max



tlveik
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Joined: Mon Feb 04, 2019 3:59 pm

Re: Tonga 2019

Post by tlveik »

Wow Tonga, that's way out there. Nice photos. I like the way that last shot turned out.

Tom



RikWriter
Posts: 483
Joined: Tue Jul 25, 2017 8:36 pm

Re: Tonga 2019

Post by RikWriter »

That's just incredible Max!



User avatar
Max
Posts: 195
Joined: Sun Jul 23, 2017 12:27 pm

Re: Tonga 2019

Post by Max »

Thanks guys!

Max



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