Walking the coast a couple of days ago, I saw a splash of color which turned out to be the umbrellas of a fishing party. Not bad, I thought. But then a puff of spray from a humpback whale just offshore from the group. Photo opportunity, I thought. Just a matter of lining up the camp and the whale.

This much I have learnt about humpbacks: they don’t feel obligated to accommodate photographers. I hurried along to line up the whale with the fishing party. The whale kept moving. I scurried about. And then when I finally got into a decent position, the whale disappeared. No breach. No slapping and splashing. Not so much as a blow. The best I got was this photo where a sliver of the whale’s back can be seen at the center top, where there’s a tiny blip of white.

What it was supposed to do was something along the lines of the humpback in the photo below, taken yesterday. Ah well, it’s always a joy to see the whales, good photos or not.