An absolutely perfect trip!

Today was absolutely incredible!

We sailed from Grindavík again and once again the tour was magnificent!
We saw 4 Killer Whales (Orcinus orca) and 3 Humpback Whales (Megaptera novaeangliae). And the experience was just insane!

One of the humpbacks did a full body breach out of the water! I didn't get a shot of it but it was still an utterly exhilarating thing to see! And all of the orca and humpbacks were swimming underneath and around our boat, coming within a metre of the boat and being perfectly calm around us. Even the sea seemed to sense the perfect occasion and was glassy still throughout the tour.

I can't really describe how excellent the tour was, we spotted the first whale after 30 minutes and had constant, incredible contact for the next 2 hours. And it never got old, by the end I had butterflies in my stomach that just wouldn't fade!

Even the very start of the tour gave us some heavenly sunlight forcing its way through the clouds.

The tour gave us four juvenile male orcas. You can tell they're male by their very large, straight dorsal fins.

An orca and humpback whale together, we're pretty sure they were feeding together. The fish were quite deep and all the animals were diving together and surfacing together.

Cracking Northern Gannet picture! Largest sea bird in the North-Atlantic!

Killer whales tend to spend all their time together, they usually travel together in family pods. So it was a little unusual to see a small group without the entire family.

Love getting a good shot of an eye-spot.

The humpbacks came lips first! Silly whale, it isn't Valentines Day yet!

Cracking wings!

Basically sitting right at the surface, perfect view!

Double orca!

Love the look of the sun bouncing off the back of the orca

I ran to the bottom deck to a lovely vertical shot of the orcas surfacing!

Now this is a special picture! This is one of my best, hands down.

The little splash of water looks quite cute to me

And lastly the killer whales swam off into the sunset, they know how to end a tour...

If January continues in this vein then this blog should certainly get a lot more activity!

Thanks for reading!

After a whale absence, an old friend returned.

It has been a while since we've seen anything at all in the bay, and in that time there's been some significant changes.
I now work as a guide for Elding! This can mean only good things! It means I'll be out on the water a lot more and I'll also be staying until June! So instead of this blog ending in March it will now run until the Summer! Yaay!

And now today! The story actually starts yesterday, I had a day off so I chose to have a lazy day. The boat went on a tour to Grindavík. This is on the south coast and is known for being a Humpback hotspot but is susceptible to bad weather so we can only go on very good days. Well the tour came back with news of 6 humpies, 10 dolphins and around 30 orca... I was very angry with myself. So today I decided to use my other day off to go back on the boat!

We saw orca! Around 10-12 with adults and calves!

A big male comes bursting through the swell!

Followed by his friend, bromance followed!

A little family group, father mother and child all together!

A beautiful shot of an orca swimming near Elding

An orca calf does it's own version of the big male bursting through the swell.

Peek-a-boo. Orca style.

It looks like we'll be sailing from that port for the next few days so the chances of more orca are very good!

Thanks for reading!

Back in Iceland!

Yay I'm back in Iceland after a nice Christmas break back in rainy England.

Unfortunately the weather has been pretty terrible so far and so there has been no boat trips for me so far, but I've been finally taking advantage of the free trip perks this job offers me!
So I've been to the blue lagoon again, the first time there was Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner (Cast members from A Game of Thrones) and this time Charlie Sheen made an appearance! Celebs abound in the lagoon! Obviously I hadn't taken my camera into the water so my only proof is that it was in the Reykjavik Grapevine!

But today for the third time I did the Golden Circle tour! This consists of Gullfoss (The Golden Waterfall), Þingvellir national park and Geysir (The original geyser) along with an extra stop to a geothermal power plant that was very nice!

So now I've done the Golden Circle in summer, autumn and winter! If I really feel like it I may make a montage of the seasons, especially if I go again in Spring! But hey, right now I'll just throw down my highlights of this seasons Golden Circle trip!

Gullfoss looking lovely all covered in snow and ice!

Very odd to see the waterfall practically deserted by tourists, Winter is a serene time!

Is it me or does this raven look utterly depressed? No-one even tries to understand a raven...

Þingvellir with a glorious sunset.

I really like this, the magnificence of both the geyser Strokkur and the sunset combine well

Hopefully the beginning of 2014 will have more to report than the end of 2013!

Thanks for reading!

2013: A Top 10 in Pictures

I am currently on Christmas break back in the UK so while there won't be anything new for you until January I have decided to list my top 10 pictures that I have taken while I have been in Iceland.

So in number 10:

I remember this trip being my first trip working in Reykjavik, it was a fantastic encounter with a pod of White-Beaked Dolphins (Lagenorhynchus albirostris). They were very curious and were very happy to bow ride with our boat. This meant some cracking pictures and close ups of the dolphins. This is a great surface picture with a good look at the beak of the dolphin too.

9: 

This is my favourite Humpback Whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) named Snow White, this whale would basically guarantee an interesting tour. While it would often display aggressive behaviour it was always in interesting ways.
This is just a standard fluke dive, but the whale raised the fluke very high. It was likely going for a very long dive. I caught the perfect shot of the fluke at its highest point.

8: 

Here is another Humpback Whale, only this time it did something that only a lucky few will see. It was lunge feeding at the surface! I remember this very clearly, I also remember missing the best shot! The whale had gone down for a dive in what had been a normal encounter, then out of nowhere this whale lunges right beside the boat!
It was so fast I couldn't capture the moment but I didn't mind, I got to see the best moment and get pictures of all the other (still excellent) moments. A truly awesome sight to see.

7:

Without a doubt the best picture I have of a Minke Whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata). Minke whales are usually more cautious and shy than Humpback Whales, plus they are much smaller (8-10m long) and never raise their fluke. So getting a noteworthy picture of them is rather difficult. But on this trip we had a Minke that had no qualms about our presence, and this allowed for a picture I am very proud of.

6: 

This is another picture from the first trip in Reykjavik, this picture is special for a number of reasons. Any good picture of multiple dolphins is a treat, but being able to see the beak of the closer one and a clear three spot tattoo patch on the further one just make this one of my best.

5: 

I don't remember a story behind this picture, I just think it's rather pretty! And that is good enough for the list!

4:

While I have had some better real life sightings of the Northern Lights this is the best picture I have of them, it has taken me quite a while to really get to grips with photography when it comes to the aurora. So in the future I hope to get some picture that'll dwarf this!
But this is still an excellent pic, the lighthouse and the stars with the aurora make this something I love.

Time for the top 3: 

When I took this picture I decided to dedicate a whole post to it, I really do think it's excellent. This is a Common Guillemot (Uria aalge). It is a diver and will never allow you to get close before going for a dive, but this was an unusually brave bird. And I am very grateful, the level of detail and clear water means this is a picture I am very proud of!

2: 

White-Beaked Dolphins are very acrobatic animals, most of the time pictures of these actions are either far away or too fast to get a picture of. This a fantastic combination of a nearby horizontal breach that is also timed very well.
This is my 2nd favourite picture because of the difficulty of getting such a picture and how perfectly it turned out. All in focus with the light and colour just right!

And the champion of 2013: 

I know! I know! It's not a whale breaching or a stunning aurora, it's a Black-Legged Kittiwake (Rissa tridactyla). But to me this is the ultimate 10/10 perfect picture. The water is glassy still, the bird is in full focus, the colours contrast perfectly and the level detail is incredibly high.
This picture shows how it's not always about capturing an already spectacular event, but to take something completely normal and portray it in a seriously beautiful manner.
That is the true power of photography.

Thanks for reading, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! (Takk fyrir að lesa, Gleðileg jól og farsælt komandi ár!)

Humpback of the month

On the back of some favourable weather we have actually been going out on the water! And the weather has been pretty darn spectacular, not warm though. The temperature ranged from -10°C to -17°C. Add in a very cold wind and you have some very numb fingers and toes.
But the skies were blue, the mountains were white and the sea was still. And there isn't much else you can ask for!

Or can you?

You can even ask for a humpback whale!! We had heard reports from a friendly captain the day before of a humpback whale at Hafnarfjörður (Hap-na-fyur-thur) which is a town adjacent to Reykjavik so we immediately set sail to that location!

We spotted a blow in the distance and headed in that direction. Then suddenly right by our boat the whale surfaced, both us and the whale were clearly startled and the whale dived immediately. But for the rest of the trip the whale was incredibly calm and cool around the boat, it was travelling very slowly and was happy to come right up to the boat. It was never overtly curious but never attempted to move away from us.
It would have been the perfect sighting, but it never once raised its fluke. This makes sense as it was swimming basically on the shore, the water was under 10 metres deep! It would only raise the fluke if it needed to dive deep and diving 5 metres doesn't qualify.

The Esjan mountains were look gorgeous in this weather!

The humpy took a dive just in front of Mount Keilir, which translates literally as cone mountain.

You can see just how close to land the whale was! Standing on the shore you would have gotten some incredible views of the whale!

Thanks for reading!

It's a Winter Wonderland!

I can't actually remember the last time we went out on the boat, never mind the last time we went out and had a successful tour!

Last week the weather basically consisted of a lot of rain and a lot of wind, the worst conditions possible expect for a volcanic eruption really.

But yesterday and today we have had some excellent snow! And we've been truly making the most of it!

Yesterday was the annual tradition of the company I work for (Elding) where they go to a local school and bake hundreds of cookies to give as Christmas gifts to the many hotels and businesses that promote Elding Whale Watching. It was a night of many Christmas songs (Gleðileg Jól!) and lots of delicious baking (we may have tasted a few). And afterwards after a lot of snow had fallen we all had a snowball fight, as mature adults do!

And today even more snow had fallen! So I went for a bit of a walk and got some nice pictures of the city in the snow and some of the bird life attempting to cope with it all!

Our home in the snow!

A few redwings taunted me as I tried to catch the perfect shot.

But I'm sure I won this round, gotcha!

Just lovely!

The Reykjavik city pond is named Tjörnin. The ice is always pretty!

Day 27, the pigeons still think I'm one of them... Diary of a mallard.

Two pink-footed geese having a stand off on the ice. Loser is doomed to swim!

Female pigeons are much prettier than the males!

The weather looks like it may improve over the next few days so we can only hope!

Thanks for reading!