When we recently traveled to Alaska for vacation, one of my main goals was to photograph humpback whales breaching out  of the water. Until now, I had only seen this on tv shows. So we boarded a 50-foot boat in Juneau and explored the Inside Passage for 9 days. We did manage to see breaching humpback whales in the Frederick Sound. This little guy was a .  young humpback, maybe 8-10 tons worth. As we came upon him, he breached six times, each one closer to the boat; What really makes this image one of my favorites is the difficulty it took to get it. We were in steady rain, and had 4-foot waves pounding our boat. But persistance won out!