Flashes of Panic

I have a lot of pictures from today, but these two may be my favorites. The original un-cropped shots are also on Flickr; these were taken with the “point the camera where the subject may turn up, mash down the shutter when you see it” method, so I’m surprised they came out this well. If I’d had A’s hardware setup, I’d be selling the photos to whale-watch outfits for promotions.

We got a closer look at a big old seal on the return journey, but he didn’t give us quite as many photo ops. The whale, we were guessing, was probably six feet across the beam.

Update 7/28: Consensus seems to be that it was a minke whale.