A new camera, a perfect practice range.

I have a new camera! I finally have a quality camera, in the past I was borrowing a work camera to take many of my pictures. My own camera was capable of taking good pictures, but my greatest pictures were almost all taken on other cameras. Now my own Nikon D200 will go with me to many places and hopefully a new variety of pictures will appear!

But I recently got a fantastic opportunity to take my camera for a test drive, of course another whale watching trip! This trip gave us a fantastic Humpback Whale that was constantly lunge feeding very close to our, some awesome photographic opportunities here. Plus some White-Beaked dolphins were giving us a great showing once again, they are really turning into our 'Mr Dependables' on these tours!

Lunge feeding pictures! Love the look of those engorged ventral pleats!

And of course dolphins to top everything off!

Thanks for reading!

Food glorious food!

This particular event actually happened a few weeks ago but after a brief trip to Denmark and a whole lot of work I've finally got time to update this blog!

This trip was highlighted by a massive feeding frenzy in which we were surrounded by a Humpback Whale, a number of Minke Whales and thousands of birds all diving into the water around us!

A real pleasure to guide on a tour like this, you can share in the awesome excitement of the spectacle and have the chance to get some great pictures. At the end of the tour a tourist actually asked if I was a bird watcher, apparently I was so excited at the birds feeding around us. Frankly I was so happy that when the whale disappeared there was still something to talk about!
It was a four species day, though the dolphins and minkes were quite elusive but the majority of my best pictures were the birds. Never been a bird enthusiast but its hard not to get excited about seeing them catch fish!

A good picture of a Harbour Porpoise!! The best one I've gotten! Close and in-focus!

Mt Esja looked great with the Sun shining in the crux of the mountain

A Lesser Black-Backed Gull catching a fish in front of us

A gull slamming on the handbrake!

Loooove this picture! Lesser Black-Backed Gull hovering in the air

Lovely fluke shot, we've been IDing all our recent whales. This guy is named Teardrop

Northern Gannets are so glorious

This Humpback was a huge one!

Dived right beside us, put on quite a nice show it did!

Thanks for reading!

Is this the end of Humpback season?!

So generally the best time for Humpback Whales is Feb/March in Faxaflói, now as we are in April the numbers of humpies that we have been seeing has been decreasing. So every tour we see some humpies I am very very grateful!
And during the summer months the most common species to be seen is the Minke Whale, and we just started seeing more Minkes over the last few weeks. Just today we saw at least 4, with more probably in the area! Though Minkes are a very elusive species (quite boring when compared to a Humpback) probably because they're still hunted and so have learned to fear boats.
So today's tour warrants a mention because of my actually having a good camera to hand and because of pretty cool sightings. So along with the usual dolphins, porpoises and occasional minke all making brief appearances often our tours rely on the best entertainment from Humpbacks. And on the 13:00 tour today it paid off! There were two incidents of note: First was when one of the whales took a dive and fluked using almost its entire body! Then right as we were leaving at the end of the tour a humpback did a full 360° roll right beside us! It scared the hell out of everyone on board but it was the perfect goodbye.

Fluke shots don't get much more perfect

I love Humpback Whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) so much!

You can see how it threw over half of its body out of the water during this dive, pretty amazing.

And hey, a bird picture! Those are a lot less common now!

On the bird front hopefully in the next month when the Arctic Terns and Atlantic Puffins return to Iceland there'll be some more winged goodness.

And in a few days I'm off to Denmark for a short holiday so expect some touristy pics!

Thanks for reading!

Sorry for the absence, but I've been on a glacier!

It really has been a while since my last update! In that time it has mostly been more of the same really, thus why I haven't been updating much. I've got some okay pictures but I didn't figure it was anything special. Over that time the weather has been diabolical, plenty of cancelled tours and made for some nasty sights.
But over the last few days Spring has finally arrived! The weather just became seriously beautiful! Blue skies, warm temperatures and a still ocean. Pretty much perfect for whale watching. And during this good weather spell I took a pretty amazing tour, I took a coach trip to Skógafoss waterfall, Sólheimajökull glacier, Reynisfjara beach and Seljalandfoss waterfall.

Here I am at Skógafoss!

And here I am at Sólheimajökull

The name of the glacier means Glacier; Home of the Sun. You can see why!

Reynisfjara beach has some gorgeous basalt columns

And at Seljalandfoss you can walk behind the waterfall, here I am!

Skógafoss gave us a fine double rainbow

The glacier has been retreating massively, they keep having to move the signs. In the last few years it has retreated 200m!

Foreshadowing. Giving me an ice axe isn't a great idea...

The glacial lagoon at the base is actually new

The scenery here was just excellent

As you can tell by all the pictures, I loved the glacier!

Seljalandfoss was such an amazing place, I was mesmerised by the waterfall. We were sheltered from the wind too so we were in our own bubble of perfect weather.

What an awesome day! Hoping this weather stays this good for a long long time!

Thanks for reading!