Huffin’ & puffin
Photographing the world’s best-loved seabird
While I may be an all-round nature and landscape photographer, my main passion is wildlife photography. I completely adore photographing the intricacies of each species’ behaviour while in the calming solitude of nature. However, puffins compete for the top spot of my favourite wildlife subjects to photograph – the others being whales, eagles and bears.
Puffins are simply a pleasure to photograph because of their exaggerated mannerisms and dazzling colours. I have photographed many species of puffin, including: tufted ( Fratercula cirrhata), horned ( Fratercula corniculata) puffins in Alaska, and Atlantic puffins ( Fratercula arctica) in Maine and Svalbard, Norway, before heading up to the 80th parallel (a circle of latitude 80 degrees above the equator) above the High Arctic.
While all puffin species are unique, my favourite are the Atlantic puffins, which are the smallest of the three. This makes them a little more challenging to photograph, but the that’s all part of what makes photographing them so much fun.
I photographed these puffins on Machias Seal Island, home to over 5000 puffins, off the
Puffins are simply a pleasure to photograph because of their exaggerated mannerisms and dazzling colours
coast of Maine. The island has an interesting history that continues to this day, with both Canada and the US claiming ownership. Regardless of the land dispute, both countries have collaborated since 1944, towards the goal of continuing the islands’ designation as a migratory bird sanctuary.
Weather permitting, there are only two sanctioned operators that are permitted to transport you to the island. The guides quickly go over the rules, and escort you along a costal pathway to the blinds, where you remain for 90 minutes before departing the island. This is done so that no one disturbs the puffin colony and especially the pufflings (baby puffins).
As it is with wildlife, there are many variables at play that affect each trip to the island – puffin activity and even who you are with play big roles, but the largest factor is definitely the weather on the island.
The blinds where I took the photographs from were small on the inside, especially for someone over six feet tall, like myself. You can also only have one side of the small blind openings down at a time, and this creates lens mobility issues with your neighbours, who are cramped tightly within the safety of the blinds.
The morning I took these shots it started off foggy, but by mid-morning it had turned into a beautiful day. I photographed many of these images with a Nikon 300mm f/2.8 attached to a Nikon D5. Even though I photographed these images past prime puffin photo time, the activity was decent, all things considered.
It was a struggle to capture puffins returning to the burrows with mouthfuls of fish and squid. While this is always a fun challenge, the puffins were fishing less as most of the pufflings were older and less dependent on their parents.
When the puffins did return they would hastily dash into their burrows – which means I had to be on my game to grab a shot that I was happy with!