A Whale of a Time: Underwater whale adventures
I shot this probably for an hour with over-the-shoulder light - everything you in a picture. I asked "what's on the other side?" and we moved over and I havve never done anything with golden-light pictures, it's the siluette that made them. Photos submitted by Flip Nicklan.
Forty-eight years ago Charles ‘Flip’ Nicklin’s father Chuck rode a whale. His family owned a dive shop in San Diego and during a routine dive while he was searching for lobster for dinner with some friends they came across something much bigger. They spotted a whale and approached it in a small boat. As they got closer they realized that its flukes were being held down by an anchor line to a gill net. They approached the gigantic creature with caution and excitement – to their surprise the whale didn’t react to them. They explored the large mammal for awhile; petting it, swimming around it, taking photographs, and eventually Chuck slid onto the back of the whale. “He sat there and waved at the camera- a hero shot,” said Flip Nicklin in his forward for his new book, “Among Giants, Life with Whales.’” That was the day that changed the fate of the Nicklin family forever.
After that encounter, his father was featured in films across the world. During a feature on the television show, “To Tell the Truth,” his moment on the whale was seen by then underwater National Geographic photographer Bates Littlehales. Littlehales wanted to get footage of whales and contacted his father because he was a whale expert, simply because he had seen one. “That little thing probably changed everything for us,” said Nicklin during an interview at the Point Vincente Interpretive Center on Oct. 19. His dad shot the first Imax film on whales, “Nomads of the Deep,” and afterwards the family was hooked. Nicklin didn’t initially want to be a photographer; he wanted to be a biologist. However his 8th grade teacher told him that with his academic skills, he should do something else. “He was absolutely right,” said Nicklin.
In 1979 while his father was shooting the Imax film in Hawaii, Nicklin met 15 grad students that would change the course of his life. “They were going to change the studies from the myth and magic of whales to the geographic studies of whales,” said Nicklin. “They were young, just getting going and hadn’t published their stuff yet. I didn’t realize at the time that my career was going to be telling their stories. At one point in the middle of all of it I thought I could do other things and took a few years and shot polar bears. But eventually I thought, “What am I doing?” I can do whales and dolphins better than anybody — that’s what I should be doing.” Since then Nicklin has been across the world and deep under water following whales and dolphins of all shapes, sizes and temperaments across the globe in search of the perfect shot.
“Trying to pick a favorite picture is just about impossible at this point,” said Nicklin. “After 30-something years there are so many great moments. Early on as strange a thing as I could do as a kid from San Diego was to work in the high arctic. My assignment was to do narwhals, the unicorn whale with a 10-foot tusk. I had been out for 3.5 months with a film review saying “nothing usable yet.” I had done just about all the things I can imagine to do wrong in a new environment. On the last calm day one of the researchers came in and said something strange was happening and there were two male narwhals with a dying female. We went out on a boat and spent seven hours with these two males fighting off group after group of other males that were coming in. I finally got in the water and it was like jumping in the middle of a big fight in a pool hall with all these tusks ripping around. One of the young ones even put his tusk in front of my chest It’s funny, after 3 and a half months thinking I’m never going to work again because I wasn’t getting anything, it went on to be one of the most successful stories I ever did.”
After four decades of photographing whales, Nicklin has shown the massive mammals in ways they have never been seen before, helping researchers understand their behaviors, their songs and their lives more fully. He has crossed the globe many times over, even seeing whales multiple times in the same spots, during different years. His new book encompasses his years of expeditions with full color photographs and the stories behind the moments. “Eventually I just realized that I was the [National] Geographic whale guy and thought, what a good deal,” Nicklin said. PEN