paul hobson wildlife photography

paul hobson wildlife photography

Orcas of Vancouver Island

Orcas have always held a special fascination for me and part of my trip in July 2006 to British Columbia had put aside a week or so to photograph, or at least to try to get some reasonable images of these incredible animals. Vancouver Island is quite a big island and we concentrated our efforts at two places, Telegraph cove in the north and Victoria in the south. We saw whales on about 50% of our trips and each area has its own unique advantages. The north is far more remote has many less boats whilst the south is more organised has more boats but does have a better chance of seeing whales. All the images are taken from a boat and mainly use either a 300 or 500 IS lens handheld, though at times the whales came too close and a 70-200 was then ideal. The whales have 3 primary behaviour modes with no set times for each, sleep, play and feed. Sleep is best for getting shots of groups of whales and all those above in groups are in sleep mode. Play is short lived and can be very dramatic with spy hopping (whales stick their heads out of the water to view) and breaching. We did see play once and saw at least 3 individual whales breaching, an incredibly powerful and amazing sight, though you can imagine my frustration in that they were quite a long way off and I couldn't get a shot at all. Feeding mode is usually when the pod breaks up and individual whales chase fish, where they come up for a breather is far less predictable.