Monday, July 13, 2009

Puffins finally tamed

I eventually arrived to Runde at about 7 pm and it was too late to get the tourist information open. Fortunately they were nice people at the campground and told me that time is perfect and where should I go to have a chance to take some pictures of puffins.
It turned out that way to puffins isn't paved with roses. It's very sharp climb at the beginning, then few hundred meters of almost flat terrain. Guy at the camping told me that it will take about 1 hour - I made in 30 minutes sometimes running, because I wanted to catch these beasts in good light. While you have 400mm/5.6L lens on your body it requires short times, so light is important. Finally I got to the cliff and.... saw my first beast sitting on the rock:

Then I saw millions of others... and started to shoot pictures like crazy. Shortly my CF card was full and I had to change it to another one. Beasts were coming and coming and doing different things. I started to get closer to them. Once I was so close that had to change lens to 70-200/4L (a bit lighter) and later I was even so close that I could touch puffin - guy next to me was shooting it with wide lens like 17-35 or something! And he had full frame filled with puffin. Amazing. I spent a lot of time shooting them, but eventually it started to rain and getting dark, so I went back to camping and promised to myself to go up there early morning. Unfortunately rain was heavy and it was so dark that I had to change my mind. So I've only these few pictures of puffins. Please enjoy!

Hint: Photograph puffins in the evening if you want to catch them on the rocks and during the day if you want to catch them flying and catching fish. From my experience I can say that it's much easier photograph them while seated :)

2 comments:

Sylwester said...

Chris,
why you'd made me stay here alone, why???

Pictures are fantastic.

Regards,

Sylwester

Unknown said...

Fantastic photos :-)