This is a real photograph scanned right off my original 35mm color film negative ZERO MANIPULATING SUBJECTS for placement or altering them.

I did use Photoshop® to retouch some reflections off the tourist aquarium glass and make basic tonal adjustments, but otherwise the composition is exact to the original capture.

PERFECT Timing, Composition, Moment:

Photography students are taught about the "decisive moment" in school -- this photograph executes it brilliantly and offers a great example of a perfect combination of photographic Timing, Composition and Moment.

Now days digital photographers would fire off their motordrive and composite several images in Adobe Photoshop® to make a picture this perfect, but there is nothing fake or manipulated about this unedited image.

KILLER INSTINCTS:

This decisive moment illustrates the absolute killer instincts that make a great still photographer. The motion picture and video photographers work on the same principal, you just press the button before and after the peak moment to capture your clips.

I shot this photograph with a cheap snapshot 35mm film camera in 1998 -- the camera did not have a motordrive.

I got one shutter click as the whale swam by.

The man and three children in the picture are random Sea World visitors who just walked up to the glass -- nothing was setup or posed -- I just stepped back and took this snapshot.

I was extremely lucky in the perfect timing and composition of this truly incredible photographic image of the juvenile whale swimming in captivity.

But I've always been lucky this way.

This JJ whale with my mother at Sea World remains one of my favorite GBALLARD photographs of all time inasmuch for the moment with my mom and its perfect shutter release that froze the special memory in time in near unbelievable composition.

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO JJ BABY GRAY WHALE CALF?

JJ baby gray whale photo San Diego Sea World aquarium, 1998 (with Grandma B in wheelchair).

My mom (in the courtesy wheelchair) was visiting San Diego from the Midwest and we were out and about making beautiful memories in Southern California.

It would be reasonable to think JJ the young grey whale calf was rescued, raised and released in the Pacific Ocean by the San Diego Zoo, but the baby whale was in fact saved by Sea World San Diego, and released off Point Loma, San Diego waters, on March 31, 1998.

The newborn gray whale calf was found severely dehydrated and hypoglycemic when it arrived at Sea World San Diego on January 12, 1997. SeaWorld staff rescued the baby whale, nursed it back to health and released it back in the wild Pacific Ocean about a year later.

I don't believe there was ever a confirmed sighting after release -- media reports at the time said JJ's GPS tracking device stopped working almost immediately and speculated it either detached or malfunctioned....

In still photography timing is everything.