Whales and Albatrosses Galore

After having gone through a couple of scary saltwater incidents with my camera at my usual albatross spotting site. I was very pleased when I received a tip about another site a little further South that apparently was much more camera friendly. Combined with the presence of hundreds of whales making their way North in the waters just of the Sydney coast, I reasoned that being at an elevated position overlooking the ocean, on a sunny crispy clear winter day, just the Bigma and I alone, would be an excellent way of recharging the capacitors.

It was action-packed! Before I had found a good seat on the rocks the first two whales had already started performing approximately 700 meters from the coast - when something has whale size, 700 meters is no problem for the Bigma and I got a picture or two ;-)

Starting to scan the water I realized there was an albatross sitting feeding on something "floaty" not that far from the coast, great having floaty stuff around, the entire time I used down there this spot was constantly being visited by seabirds flying in, eating and eventually leaving again, giving great bird in flight/landing/takeoff pictures (BIF, BIL and BIT).

I realized after my first two attempts that it is impossible to show pictures of albatrosses taken with a telelens and make the viewer realize how big these birds actually are ... except if you get something else into the frame. The attraction of the floaty stuff gave me the shot I wanted :-)

A seagull had been having a little go, but wisely decided to move when an albatross landed, luckily I managed to catch the situation while they were both there and the albatross still had its wings out.
All fired up about my luck with the birds I started focusing on the whales again and managed to get a pictures with a little (compared to the whale) boat close to the surfacing whale - some people just cannot get close enough.

All in all an absolute top spot! With birds flying so close that the 3 meter focusing distance of the Bigma (@500mm) nearly became a problem :-D