Whale Watching Archives

Using the Sigma 150-600mm F5-6.3 lens, Traci Walter is living her dream photographing Orcas while working as a whale watch naturalist. Residing on San Juan Island in Washington State (a killer whale hotspot), Traci runs about two whale watch trips daily, where she teaches tourists about the beauty of these incredible animals.

A Humpback whale does a tail lob near Telegraph Cove, BC. © Traci Walter | 2017

Where it all began

Wildlife played a huge role in Traci’s life beginning at a young age. Though she grew up in a city, Traci spent a great deal of time in the Northwoods of Wisconsin; the place where her passion for wildlife sparked. She recalls exploring, constantly looking for animals, and returning home to tell her family about what she had seen that day.

At 13 years old, Traci received her first camera from her grandfather. This small gesture enabled Traci to photograph the magnificent wildlife as she saw it, which only made her passion grow.

Continue reading Traci Walter: Capturing Killer Whales with The Sigma 150-600mm F5-6.3 Lens

I’ve been on an extended test-drive with the Sigma 150-500mm F5-6.3 this year, paired with my trusty Nikon D7100. The great thing about this match is since the D7100 has a cropped sensor with a 1.5x factor, the 500mm reach effectively becomes 750mm. Using the in-camera 1.3 crop for added photo burst rate I end up with nearly 900mm of reach at the long end! That really comes in handy with wildlife photography. I have had a ton of fun with the lens and have to say I will have a very hard time ever giving it back. Besides being light enough to carry all day, the lens performs extremely well for wildlife, action sports, and big-orb sunsets, both on land, and on board boats in the waters off Long Island. And more recently, it’s been my go-to lens for New York whale watching.

Having now made several whale watching voyages, I have had had no problem getting sharp shots from a moving boat. The harder part was getting the whales to cooperate by doing anything other than slowly swimming and surfacing briefly! This all changed when my friend Artie Raslich recently invited me on his 26 foot boat named Ship of Fools to follow a pod of whales that had been feeding actively close to shore within sight of New York City off Long Beach and East Rockaway New York. After passing through Deb’s inlet and breaking through a fog bank we found our first whale that we ended up following for several hours. One of my first shots was a fairly young Humpback gliding out of the fog. Artie knows his Whales and quickly identified this one as NYC0015. Apparently this one and his Mother have been in the area all year feeding on the abundant bunker in the area.

Continue reading New York Whale Watching with the Sigma 150-500mm