Cover of Alaska Watchable Whales Book – Image 2778

Last year, I came out with a new redesign of my very popular whale book. After six years, I changed the cover and added 40 plus images from Jay and Jayleen Beedle. I entered the book in three different national book contests. It placed in all three contests including: the Benjamin Franklin Awards (second place for best redesigned book), the International Book Awards, (2nd place in the animal/pet category), and the IPPY Awards (third place in the animal/pet category). The IPPY Awards had over 4,800 books entered in this year’s contest spread over about 50 categories with an average of 50 books per category. The photo was taken at Pt Adolphus in Icy Strait. I shot this image while on an Alaska Discovery trip. It is really hard to line up three elements necessary to make this photo work…a whale that spends 99% of its time underwater, the kayakers and my boat all moving rather randomly. It took me a week in the rain to get this image. Besides the cover of my book, Patagonia brought this image a long time ago for an ad campaign in the Japanese market. Thanks for visiting. Camera body: F4, 300mm f/4, scanned 35mm color slide, 35mm Fuji Velvia slide film -Mark Kelley