This could become a big news story over the next couple of days but for some reason it didn't get much attention today. There were plenty of wildlife enthusiasts and other photographers there, but I think me and Gordon Lennox from the P&J were the only news guys who turned up.

Anyway the story is that a 45-foot sperm whale spent the day swimming in circles around Avoch Bay on the Black Isle, possibly disorientated and almost certainly ill.

The major challenge in photographing something like this is the tremendous distance you're dealing with. And even if you can somehow get a long-enough focal length then you're still left with the problem of reduced visibility simply because there's so much air between the subject and the camera.

This shot was taken with a 300mm lens with stacked 2x and 1.4x teleconverters, on a 1.3x crop body, producing an effective focal length of 1092mm. That's approximately 22 times the focal length of human vision which may sound like a lot but for a job like this it really isn't very powerful at all. For reference, the Kessock Bridge in the background is 7 miles away. Lousy quality picture, but probably the best that anyone could have got under the circumstances.

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