'The moment I made eye contact with a whale'

In a series of striking photographs, Marcia Riederer captures the elegance and curiosity of the elusive dwarf minke whale. A whale the size of a large van stared directly at Marcia Riederer as it circled the rope she was holding onto in the water. "It felt like time slowed down… like it was looking into my soul," recalls Riederer. "Its eyeball was the size of my head and it was really looking at me." Riederer, a Brazilian photographer, had a life-changing experience in June 2023 when she made eye contact with a dwarf minke whale in Australia's Great Barrier Reef. "I had goosebumps. It was an intense and just amazing feeling," she says, adding that she cried during the encounter. "I felt like I'd been chosen because it came straight to me." Riederer captured this powerful encounter on camera. With its fine details and smooth lines, her black-and-white image more closely resembles a drawing or watercolour painting than a photograph. For her eye-catching photo, Riederer was named best fine art photographer at the prestigious Ocean Photographer of the Year awards in London in September 2025. At the awards ceremony, judge and deep ocean photographer Laurent Ballesta said the word that i