Alaska Photo Graphics

Breaching Orca in Prince William Sound

Prince William Sound is a sheltered waterway in Southcentral Alaska. I’ve been photographing there since 1989, the year of the infamous Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, and it is one of my favorite destinations. After perhaps thirty photographic trips there since that time, this is my first and only image of a breaching orca.

Such images are not easy to come by. Orcas, or killer whales, are quite mobile, and predicting any sort of breaching activity is difficult, let alone having your camera pointed in the right direction at the right moment. Fortunately, both of those factors fell together for this image.

While the quality of light is not spectacular, I do like the sense of power given by the spraying water. The added bonus of an image-stabilized lens provides great help when photographing from a moving boat.