David Fairs, The Breach (LANDSCAPE & ENVIRONMENT 2024)

After many attempts to find these beautiful creatures during the 2022 whale migration, including a failed whale watching tour, I was gifted an experience I will never forget. The moment we arrived, a massive mother humpback whale breached right in front of us about 350m away from the shoreline, then almost straight after, her calf breached as well. I was on! Shaking and excited, I looked to my wife who gave me the knod that she had our boy and I was free to try and capture some shots of these beauties. I launched the drone and was able to find them both very easily, a huge blessing as this is not usually the case and quite often entire drone batteries can be used just trying to get them on my screen. I spent the next two hours capturing images and video of this incredible display. The mother showing her baby how to roll, slap the surface with her fins, and how to breach and dive. I have shot many whale breaches before and I even shot another 14 breaches this day and have never been able to time the shot this perfectly. For me this shot is as rare as it gets and is a once in a lifetime photograph.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.