The Unknown Whaler

DATE IMAGE WAS TAKEN: September 18, 2022

IMAGE DESCRIPTION AND DETAILS: A small shipwreck lies near the Lighthouse of Pelican Point laying bare a part of the history of Walvis Bay that is quite sad and disturbing. The name of the wreck is unknown, but what is known is that it was part of a Norwegian whaling fleet employed to hunt the whales at Walvis Bay to near extinction. Whales were hunted by small and very manoeuvrable ships like this one, harpooned and brought to shore. The death of the whales were horrendous and lasted hours. The advent of larger floating factory ships rendered the whaling industry of Walvis Bay obsolete, but one can still see whale bones dotted around Walvis Bay to this day. Today, thanks to world-wide conservation efforts, whale sightings are becoming more common in this area, which at one time had become extremely rare.

I first imaged the foreground using a long 8 minute exposure along with Long exposure noise reduction to remove the hot pixels. Numerous shorter exposure ranging from 10 secs to 30 secs were then taken using a light panel set at 3200k. The tripod was then moved to get a clearer view of the horizon and I waited for the milky way to set closer to the horizon. A group of 20 short exposures of 30secs and iso 6400 were taken and then stacked in Pixinsight. The foreground and the sky were then blended together in Photoshop.

Camera = Nikon D850
Lens = Nikon 14-24mm @ 16mm
Sky Exposure = 30 secs F2.8 iso 6400 stack of 20
Ground Exposure = 480 secs, F2.8, iso 800 LENR LLL
Software = Pixinsight, Lightroom and Photoshop,

COPYRIGHT: Vikas Chander