Usually the second or third breach

Breaching humpbacks can be very difficult to get a photo of. Especially, when you take into account that when they breach it is almost always without warning, which makes life even more challenging. From experience, I can quite easily say that the majority of all breaching whale photos that you see are usually from the 2nd or 3rd breach from the whale. As it can be quite common that if they breach once that they do have a habit of breaching another few times afterwards, which gives you a bit more of advantage of taking that perfect whale breaching photo.

Here with this big guy, he breached about 6 times in a row and was lucky enough to get a half decent photo of after the 3rd breach. However, it should be noted that their last few breaches they make aren't as impressive as their first or second, which you can see in the photo, as the animal is doing what we refer to as a half breach or partial breach. It does take a lot of energy to launch your 30+tonne body out of the water.