During a trip to Boston, I put a whale-watching trip on the agenda. The weather cooperated, and the New England Aquarium's catamaran took us out to a pretty active area about an hour out to sea.

We first encountered a minke whale, which wasn't too photogenic. Later, we came upon a pod of dolphins. There were easily 50 of them within a short distance of the boat. None, however, were especially energetic, so the photos weren't too interesting.

On the technical side, I shot with a Canon Digital Rebel XT, with a Sigma 18-125 lens. Since I'm still learning the tech stuff from the photo side, I think that's all I can report.

After hanging with the dolphins for a few minutes, we saw likely whale activity a short distance away, so the captain headed us in that direction. We got some great close-up views of two humpback whales.

Since the boat was crowded, shooting at the rail was mostly out of the question. And a tripod wasn't happening, either, so I just did my best.

The whales spent a good 10 minutes just hanging on their backs, occasionally pounding their pectoral fins onto the surface. You could easily see where barnacles had attached themselves to the whales. That's the photo at the top of this post. One whale breached one time, and I didn't have a great view of the action.

But the breach did get ooooh's and aaaaah's from the crowd. After about 15 minutes of the fin pounding and such, the whales seemed to decide to move on, and we headed back to the dock. We did encounter another minkie, and more dolphins on the return, but we simply sailed past them.

As we entered the harbor, you could feel the moment when the temperature rose by about 5 degrees, and the day had become overcast. This was a pretty good way to end a Boston weekend.