Roving-Eye Gallery update and newsletter #12 for October 2021
 

Hello to everyone and thank you to the new subscribers.. welcome aboard!

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With the October update just uploaded head to What's New! | Roving-Eye.com and you can scroll back month by month for a catch up for previous months too!

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Firstly the 2022 Calendars arrived in A4 and A3 versions and have been flying out the door.. so if you want one you better get in quick because it’s a strictly limited edition print run and once they are sold that is it!

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It’s been super gratifying to hear the list of countries they are headed to.. taking a little slice of Port to far flung corners of the globe such as Iceland, UK, Europe and nearby New Zealand too!

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Please head over to 2022 Calendars | Roving-Eye.com and take a look!

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October was a bumper crop for new images, 56 in all! Each month will vary depending largely on the weather and from just one storm alone with 14 unique images from it in just an hour that was a normal year’s quota alone!

 

Another great thing that happened in October was getting some “bucket list” whale shots.. specifically I wanted to line up a leaping whale with a recognisable landmark to “complete” the picture and make it just that bit more relatable.

 

Of course you can’t get a whale to leap to order (unfortunately!) but by going out multiple times now that I finally got the Jetski ocean ready I was able to get the key shots I was after before the season wound up!

 

So how DO you go about getting a leaping whale shot I hear you ask?

 

Well you could rely on just dumb luck, and nothing wrong with that if it lines up for you, but I try and stack luck in my favour as much as I can!

 

Firstly Leigh the whale spotter on the headland guiding the local whale spotting boats is a friend and also the national ORRCA rescue coordinator who I regularly help out with my drone shots of whale entanglements so it’s no trouble for him to give me distance and compass bearing over the radio to anything he has spotted.with his expert eye. and that could be close or halfway to the horizon!

 

Secondly once a prospective whale, or pod of whales, have been spotted motoring over to them to try and pick them up is the next thing which may or may not work depending on how much time they spend submerged when you get there making themselves invisible!

 

Thirdly once and if you have them then it’s a matter of quietly following along and seeing what happens which is very much luck of the draw as to how active, or quiet, they might be or how that might change!

 

Fourthly and lastly if some breaching starts to happen is to keep your legal (and safe!) distance and combine vessel and camera work to get the sun where you want it, the whales where you want it and ideally a landmark behind it to finish off the image so when a whale is suddenly heading skyward you have the finger on the trigger ready to swivel onto it and fire!

 

To get an idea of what it’s like shooting with the required telephoto lens, standing and balancing on the ski on a bumpy ocean with a long lens and also giving steering and throttle inputs all at once head over to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUlyxxNx3bo&t=133s

 

It’s a lot of fun and coming away with some satisfying images is a great pleasure because of all the things that needed to be lined up for it to come off!

 

The ski is now ready for some serious ocean trials for such as maximum weight and optimum balance configurations, best at-sea refuelling methods and fuel consumption rates based on ocean state, ski load, speeds and engine modes left to do.

 

There’s no better place than my “home ground” on the mid north coast to stretch it’s legs and get these final

pieces of the puzzle together to then head far afield for some amazing images I want to get from it so stay tuned for the year ahead!

 

Take care and thank you for reading this far and sharing the journey!