Humpback Whale Photographs by Craig Parry

How to photograph a giant humpback whale: ‘Emergence’ featured in WIRED

Humpback Whale photographs are the speciality of nature photographer Craig Parry. Craig Parry sat down with Wired to find out how to Photograph a Giant Humpback Whale.

IT MAY SEEM obvious, but whales are huge. Take the humpback, for example. They’ll reach 52 feet and almost 40 tons. Nature photographer Craig Parry has spent a lot of time capturing these gentle giants, and last year he finally snapped his “dream photo.”

Parry traveled to Tonga, a Polynesian kingdom of more than 170 islands about 1,400 miles north of New Zealand. He heard that it wasn’t uncommon for visitors to enjoy close encounters with Megaptera novaeangliae, and it would be an understatement to say he was excited. “After years of visualising this ‘under and over’ image I finally had the chance to capture it,” Parry says.

“Over and under” is just what it sounds like: an image that is partially above water and partially below. To achieve such a photo, photographers usually shoot with an extremely wide lens and a narrow aperture for maximum depth of field. They also tend to use a watertight housing to protect their equipment. In this case, Parry’s Canon 1DX and 14mm f2.8 were snug and warm in his Aquatech Water housing.

IT MAY SEEM obvious, but whales are huge. Take the humpback, for example. They’ll reach 52 feet and almost 40 tons. Nature photographer Craig Parry has spent a lot of time capturing these gentle giants, and last year he finally snapped his “dream photo.”

Parry traveled to Tonga, a Polynesian kingdom of more than 170 islands about 1,400 miles north of New Zealand. He heard that it wasn’t uncommon for visitors to enjoy close encounters with Megaptera novaeangliae, and it would be an understatement to say he was excited. “After years of visualising this ‘under and over’ image I finally had the chance to capture it,” Parry says.

“Over and under” is just what it sounds like: an image that is partially above water and partially below. To achieve such a photo, photographers usually shoot with an extremely wide lens and a narrow aperture for maximum depth of field. They also tend to use a watertight housing to protect their equipment. In this case, Parry’s Canon 1DX and 14mm f2.8 were snug and warm in his Aquatech Water housing.

Craig Parry Underwater Photography Whale

Award-winning image of a 40 tonne Humpback Whale spy hopping in the waters of Vava’u Tonga. This image was featured by National Geographic in 2015.

On the second day of his adventure in Vava’u Tonga, Parry lucked out. He came across three humpbacks, two males and a female. He spent two hours photographing them, and the whales seemed to be having as much fun as he was. “It was so interactive that every so often I would go back to the boat to swap lenses, this female would follow me all the way back and wait for me,” he says.

Parry had decided to call it a day and was headed for the boat when he noticed the female whale preparing to spy hop, or poke its head out of the water to have a look around. Parry had visualized such a photo for a long, long time. “I calmed myself down and composed the image, making sure the ocean’s surface was calm, and evenly placed across my lens port, and then click!” he says.

Parry named the image Emergence for two reasons. First, it describes the whale breaching the surface. And second, the photo represents how much he grew as a photographer in the year before he took the photo. “I can’t tell you how proud I am of this image, and I hope when people see my images it encourages and inspires them to grab a camera and discover the beauty of this planet,” Parry says.

Read the full story from WIRED here.