Uncategorized – Page 21 – Tales from Wild Wales

Now or never….

Dinghy at sunset, Newport (Pembrokeshire)

About ten days ago a break was forecast in the almost unremittingly cloudy weather we have endured recently here in west Wales. After consulting the details for a number of possible destinations I settled on another trip down to Pembrokeshire, with the Tenby area particularly in mind. It’s getting rather late in the year now but my postcard sales are still excellent in Tenby and a couple of new images of the area would not go amiss.

Needless to say it proved to be a frustrating trip. Conditions were clear and bright by mid-afternoon on the Saturday but I could not find a location I was happy with. Sunday morning again dawned clear but there was a complex blanket of cloud over towards the east at sunrise. No golden hour light then…………! As the morning developed I could see a veil of high cirrus cloud slowly but steadily working westwards. It was just keeping pace with the progress of the sun as it moved across the sky. I eventually concluded that my best chance of a decent photograph would be to head west myself and hope that the cloud would be lit from below by the sun as it set. So I headed for Newport in north Pembrokeshire.

As it turned out I was correct. As sunset approached I made way along the north bank of the Nevern estuary towards the beach. The cirrus sheet gradually became redder and redder. It was now or never! I quickly snapped just one image of a fishing boat moored in the estuary before hurrying downstream towards what I hoped would be better things. Of all the subjects the landscape photographer may tackle the ‘boat silhouetted against the setting sun’ image is probably the biggest cliché of the lot. But this was a truly stunning sunset and further downstream, despite an almost perfect reflection, I struggled to find a composition that worked. So it was fortunate that I had spent a few seconds on a subject I would normally pass straight by.

A few words about processing this image. In film terms RAW files are said to be the negative, the processed image the finished print. The basic, unprocessed file can be seen below for comparison purposes. It is drab and uninteresting compared to the actual scene, but more accurate in a way, as I explain below. My basic processing was as follows: I first moved the “blacks” slider in Lightroom to the left which had the effect of increasing the apparent colour saturation. Then I moved the “whites” slider to the right which brightened image overall without affecting the shadows. I then turned down the highlights to counteract the effects of the latter in the brightest sections of the sky. Finally (almost) I opened up the shadows, which is apparent in the distant hillside and the dinghy, for example.

Typically any subject set against a sunset will be rendered as a silhouette, and the original file is no exception. But over and over again, one sees images containing a perfectly exposed sunset and perfectly exposed foreground subject matter. In real life, even though our eyes have a better dynamic range than a digital sensor does, this would never be the case. I suppose it began with widespread the use of neutral density filters, but the trend has become unstoppable in the digital era (here, for example) and in particular with the combination of two or more differently exposed images of the same subject. It is almost as if we now expect to see the brightest highlights and into the deepest shadows at the same time. Are we actually beginning to see the world in a different way?

Whatever happened to fieldcraft? (Part four)

I really didn’t expect this series of posts to reach part four! But a couple of weeks ago I was down in Pembrokeshire and took an early morning walk from the car park at Whitesands towards St. David’s Head. An active cold front had pushed through overnight and as well as bringing heavy rain, it formed the leading edge of an arctic airmass which eventually covered the whole of the UK. The air was sparkling in its clarity and the temperature several degrees Celsius lower than it had been the previous day; very invigorating and ideal for the outdoor photographer!

After a landscape session at Porth Melgan and a frustrating hunt for migrant birds on St David’s Head, I returned to the van. I noticed there was a flock of choughs, rooks and jackdaws feeding in a nearby field. There was a pattern to their behaviour; they would start at one end of the field and work their way into the wind, feeding as they went, until they reached the hedge-bank. Then they flew back to the shoreline for a few minutes before returning to the field. I wondered if I could get myself into position at the end of the field while they were away and photograph them as they came towards me. So I donned the nearest I had to camouflage gear and headed over.

Corvids are the most intelligent of birds and they noticed me immediately. But they were not entirely spooked; the chough, in particular, stayed faithful to the field and I felt sure that, eventually, they would come close enough to be photographed. As the afternoon wore on and my body became more numb it became apparent that they were no longer so hungry and that feeding time was more or less over. So eventually never really came and I tried to be philosophical as I returned to the van. It was worth the try….wasn’t it?

Just a couple of days ago I had a look at the results from the session. In an ideal world the birds would have been closer, but to my surprise a couple of images were actually quite useable. Thanks to the quality of my equipment – Canon 5d3 and Tamron 150-600 zoom – and the excellent light, I was able to crop down quite deeply into the image without encountering sharpness or noise problems. The image above begins to illustrate how full of character choughs really are.

To follow Tales from Wild Wales please scroll right down to the bottom and click Follow

Whatever happened to fieldcraft? (Part three)

I’ve just returned from a 1300 mile road trip which took ten days, and culminated in a couple of days in the Caledonian pine forests of Speyside. If that sounds excessive you’re right. I probably spent more time driving than enjoying the landscape or wildlife!

I spent quite a few happy days on Speyside during the 1980’s when I worked for the Nature Conservancy Council in Scotland for a short while. At the time I felt that, more than anywhere else I had experienced, the pine forests of the Spey valley had the “feel” of the primeval past. Each individual pine tree seem to speak of the ages (a far cry from the commercial plantations of mid-Wales and elsewhere) and the overall impression was more than the sum of its parts. So it was a bit of a pilgrimage for me to go back .

I had a day in the Abernethy forest near Aviemore, which is now owned by the RSPB. Much of the management work they have done has been with the aim of allowing the forest remnant to regenerate naturally and it was quite noticeable how successful this has been. It is sometimes said that we feel most comfortable in a parkland-type landscape because it is similar to the savannah which was our ancestors’ home when they first emerged from the African forest. Well, I think my ancestors must have emerged into the pine forest somewhere…….

Birdlife in the forest was, I think it is fair to say, pretty sparse. I regretted that I had not returned in spring; but then I always want to be everywhere in spring! Just occasionally one would encounter a mixed flock of small birds as they passed through high in the forest canopy. These flocks consisted of coal, blue and great tits, goldcrests and willowchaffs, with the odd crested tit mixed in. The presence of one of these Speyside specialities could be inferred from its trilling call and as soon as I heard it out would come the long lens. But in most cases the birds passed by high overhead.

Pine seeds seem to take root along the sides of tracks where loose bare soil is exposed. This leads to the formation of what is, in effect, a narrow barrier of young pine trees. Out towards the edge of the forest I came across a couple of “cresties” moving along such a row whose maximum height was only about six feet. This looked more promising! But the birds kept their distance and could barely be seen. Then I remembered a trick which I had read about in a book called “Sharing nature with children”, but never really tried. Probably too embarrassed…… but what the hell, there was no-one else around!

The trick is to make a “p” sound with pursed lips, then open the mouth and make a sssshhhhing sound, and end with a “t”. “Psssshhhhht” . That’s it! Repeat over and over again as necessary. Perhaps any similar sound would do but it seemed to work. It attracted a willowchiff and a wren appeared from nowhere to investigate. Rather than moving ahead of me along the track the cresties came closer and closer until one paused in full view just a few metres away. And I was well equipped and prepared to make the image. It was a relief to open up the file and discover that the bird is sharp and looks good amongst the pine needles. These opportunities don’t come along too often, especially when you live in rural Wales.

To follow Tales from Wild Wales scroll right down to the bottom and click Follow

Whatever happened to fieldcraft? (Part two)

In my last post I described how I managed to approach a flock of small waders to within just a few yards. I used my knowledge of the location, the season, the time of day, and the species. I approached them slowly and carefully over a period of time. It’s what is described as “fieldcraft”. It was also my good fortune that there were no freelance dogs on the beach that day…….

I’m planning to photograph red kites over the winter for my birds/landscape project and on the way back from south Wales recently I called in at Gigrin Farm near Rhayader to check out the facilities. Gigrin Farm was one of the original red kite feeding centres (if not THE original) and charged a modest fee to visitors to watch the spectacle. I was surprised to see that hides reserved for photographers were priced at £10, £17 and £22. For the latter you get access to a 2nd storey “hide” with low front and no roof. I thought this was a bit steep, but in comparison with other locations it is still a bargain.

There is an burgeoning trend these days for enterprising photographers and landowners to set up feeding stations for particular species, each one complete with a hide for photographers. The cost of one of these pay-to-enter set ups is typically £100 – £125 per day, although if you want golden eagle at the nest that can stretch to £200 – perhaps understandably in view of the unique nature of the spectacle! At the extreme end you can pay £795 for a three-day, all-inclusive holiday to photograph pine martens. So more and more of those rather wonderful images of red squirrels, crested tits, little owls and an increasing number of other species will have been taken at a pay-to-enter hide. The close-ups of ospreys catching fish which are so popular at the moment will almost certainly have been taken at a single location on Speyside. Reflection pools are also popular at some of these hides but in my opinion that type of image is already so hackneyed that their shelf life will be very short indeed!

It is perhaps understandable that this situation has arisen. Many wildlife photographers – particularly the part-time pro’s and amateurs – are pretty well off and will probably possess many thousands of pounds worth of equipment. A hundred quid is neither here nor there. At the other end of the spectrum are the fully professional nature photographers who have seen their earning power plummet over recent years. It’s a match made in heaven! The nature photographers who know their stuff set up the opportunities for those who have little time but an adequate income from elsewhere. And yet……….

It’s becoming increasingly obvious when a wildlife photograph has been taken at a pay-to-visit hide. I have already mentioned ospreys. Many of the bird/mammal portraits taken at these sites are just so “perfect”. The perches look real (you can take your own…..) and the backgrounds are blurred out and natural looking – even if they are not. What about the creature’s environment? Is that not part of the picture? Some of the images could have been taken at the zoo. The photographer still needs good light but in these set-ups wildlife image-making is more of a technical exercise: shutter speed, aperture, fast reactions and split-second timing. Even the latter is no longer the problem it once was with 10 frames a second motor-drives.

A recent article in Outdoor Photography (August issue) illuminates some of the issues more clearly. In “Nature on demand?”, the author bemoans “an over-reliance on industrialised photographic opportunities” and “the potential loss of creativity and connection with your subject”, for example. He tells us what a shame it would be “if the photographic teachers of today, for the sake of a quick buck, taught the new wave of wildlife photographers not to think for themselves”. And yet he himself, as well as being a prominent wildlife photographer, is one of the big names in wildlife photo-tourism, and must make a significant percentage of his income from the activities he criticises in the article. Where is he really coming from?

Last week I went on a boat trip out to Grassholm island to photograph gannets. Eleven bird photographers were crammed on to a RIB with barely room to move; it proved to be a little frustrating – for me, anyway. Amongst the other “punters” was a friend and skilled bird photographer, Janet Baxter. After the trip she described how earlier that day she had spent quite some time successfully habituating a family of choughs to her presence so that she could photograph them. Then along strode a group of birders who frightened the birds away and accused her of disturbing them. It was Janet who used the phrase “whatever happened to fieldcraft?” in response to this incident so I hope she doesn’t mind me appropriating it for my blog. In reply I would suggest that there is still room for fieldcraft, but that instant results are increasingly the name of the game these days.

To follow Tales from Wild Wales, please scroll right down to the bottom and click Follow

Whatever happened to fieldcraft? (Part one)

There have been some very high spring tides this week. At low tide, wading birds feed in the sand and mud of our estuaries and are more or less invisible. But at high tide they are forced onshore by rising waters. During the hour or two their feeding grounds are inaccessible they tend to rest and sleep, and can be quite approachable. This is particularly the case in autumn, when large numbers of juvenile birds are pausing on their long migratory journeys southwards. They seem to have less fear of humans than their parents. So on a visit to the high tide roost at Ynyslas, mid-Wales, on Wednesday I took advantage of these conditions to get some close-up images.

Ornithologists these days all seem to have telescopes and their preferred method of bird-watching is to stand well back above the tide-line and watch the birds as they arrive. This allows reasonably accurate counts to be made and population trends can be identified over a period of years. Photographers prefer to be nearer the action, and we do run the risk of flushing the birds from time to time as we attempt to get that bit closer. There is a certain amount of tension between the needs of one group and the other. So I let the birders do their counts before edging closer to the birds which were resting amongst areas of cobbles on the beach.

Over a period of time I gently approached them until the nearest bird was less than five metres from me! At first they appeared to be absolutely exhausted. They nearly all had head beneath wing and I watched one dunlin’s head and beak visibly drooping is it nodded off. Gradually they become more active and preened, stretched their wings and chattered amongst themselves. It was marvellous to be up close and this personal with these delightful wild creatures. One doesn’t know how much one’s own presence affected their behaviour. Were they excited to see me? It’s impossible to know. When the time came for me to leave, however, I just stood up and walked away without disturbing them in the slightest. I had been completely accepted by them.

As it happened the bird that remained closest to me was a curlew sandpiper. This species is very similar to a dunlin but a little taller and more elegant. There are minor plumage differences in autumn but the white rump is distinctive. It is an annual passage migrant to our shores in small numbers and is usually found amongst large flocks of dunlin. It can provide quite an identification challenge unless one is quite close; in the picture above the white rump can just be seen between the folded wings.

To follow Tales from Wild Wales please scroll right to the bottom of the page and click Follow

More from Sizewell

Great black-backed gull, Sizewell (click to enlarge)

After an hour or so I turned my attention away from the kittiwakes offshore (see previous post) and re-assessed my surroundings. There was only one landscape feature to be seen – the brilliant white reactor dome of Sizewell B and the extensive blue-painted steel clad building upon which it rested. Red railings ran along the edge of the latter. Whatever your opinion on nuclear power, the clean lines and simple colour scheme of the power plant gave it a modernist and surreal splendour. Far more attractive than the crumbling and filthy concrete of Sizewell A alongside it.

And wait, there was a black-backed gull resting on the railings in front of the dome! This was an opportunity not to be missed! I grabbed my tripod and stumbled across the shingle: the bird could leave at any time. I left the focal length at 600 mm to isolate the scene from its few surroundings and took a small selection of exposures over the next minute or so until the bird flew. Such an extreme focal length would flatten the scene substantially and result in a very limited depth of field, so I set apertures of f13 or f16 and added a stop or two of exposure to correct for the largely white subject.

Until this moment I wasn’t sure I would return from this trip with any worthwhile results. It had been quite a while since I had been “in the zone” but I felt I was there now. I remembered a comment from the late lamented landscape photographer Fay Godwin after she had spent ten days in northern Scotland. She thought she might have returned with “one very good photograph”. I could identify with that. As I left I felt sure I would be approached by power station security; after all – who but a terrorist would want to photograph a nuclear power plant? But as it happened my imagination was running amok.

I returned to Sizewell the next morning in the hope that I could repeat the image. Almost all the kittiwakes had left the tower and it was over two hours before a gull landed on the railings again. But while I waited I began to see the structure without the bird as pure landscape. A security camera on a post took the place of the gull and gave the image a focal point. Not everyone will like it but I think it works.

So rather than the one good image that I thought I might come back with there are actually several. It’s funny how the most inspiring photography sessions can be the most unexpected.

To follow Tales from Wild Wales, scroll right down to the bottom of the page and click Follow

A decisive moment

After what turned out to be a slightly disappointing day at Minsmere (see this post) I moved on to Sizewell, a couple of miles down the coast. The nuclear power station forms the backdrop to any view of Minsmere from the north, and is perhaps not what you might expect in a rural area like Suffolk. But I remembered an item on Springwatch which showed kittiwakes nesting on a rusty old cooling water outfall from the power station. I thought it might be a good subject for my ‘birds in the landscape’ series.

Conditions were ideal for the subject at hand. It was evening by this time and partly cloudy, so there was a choice of bright but cloudy or pale sunlight. There would be little or no disruptive shadow. Kittiwakes were lined up along the metal framework of the tower in some numbers. There were a few abandoned nests and rather more part-built ones which I suppose could have been practice nests built by inexperienced adults. I played around for quite some time, trying different viewpoints, focal lengths and crops, uncertain really how to best tackle the subject. Every so often a bird would land on the “ledge” and there would be a flurry of activity amongst nearby birds. It proved to be one of these images that to me was the most successful, taken at 600mm and cropped quite heavily again.

On my way over to Suffolk I had spent the day at Birdfair, the rather overwhelmingly massive bird-themed extravanganza at Rutland Water. During the morning I happened to come across the Canon stand where David Clapp was giving a talk on travel photography. Amongst the selection of really excellent images that he showed there was one of a group of young people lined up along the bank of the river Seine in Paris. One of the figures, he explained, was absolutely key to the composition. He hadn’t noticed it at the time but by virtue of their posture and behaviour this person linked up all the other human elements in the image.

In the kittiwake picture above the bird just to the right of the ladder is equivalent to that person (click on the image to enlarge it). The species and the setting might be completely different but the principle is the same. It was the decisive moment. This concept was linked to the renowned street photographer and photojournalist Henri Cartier-Bresson, who told the Washington Post in 1957:

“Photography is not like painting. There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera.”

He was able to predict when all the elements of his images would come together. We all do this to some extent but during his fraction of a second our motor-driven cameras are able to fire off several separate frames. He would only have been able to manage one before having to wind the film on manually. In the calm environment of our office, studio or spare room it is now so much easier to select one image from a sequence that portrays that instant.

To follow Tales from Wild Wales, please scroll right to the bottom and click follow.

The dog days of summer.

The phrase “dog days of summer” has come to mind recently. It refers to a period during mid-summer, roughly from July 3rd until August 11th, when the northern hemisphere tends to experience sultry and muggy weather. The phrase dates from ancient times when it was noticed that Sirius, the Dog Star, rises and sets in conjunction with the sun between these dates. Although we now know this cannot possibly be true, it was believed that the heat emitted by Sirius added to that from the sun to raise temperatures in our latitudes. Interestingly the phrase has also come to mean the period of stagnation or indolence which may also occur during mid-summer. That kind of rang a bell with me.

There will be other ways in which the dog days of summer can trouble the nature photographer. Green is the predominant colour in the landscape which tends…….well…..to be a bit monotonous. So a July day with a cloudless blue sky can be one of the most challenging of the year. It may look and feel lovely but the results will usually be flat and uninspiring. That wonderful burst of energy and activity which characterises wildlife in spring and early summer is over. Most bird species will have finished rearing their young and will be lurking in the undergrowth, moulting their feathers and growing new ones.

Personally I need to visit all my postcard stockists during late July and early August. My priorities tend to be focussed on dealing with customers and making sales. I find it less and less easy to change my mindset from doing that to doing anything creative. Nevertheless on my recent Pembrokeshire circuit I planned to overnight close to the Elegug Stacks near Pembroke so that I could photograph the nesting seabirds. I should have known better but with the exception of a handful of kittiwakes the season was over and the birds had already left. The night I spent on a hilltop in north Wales, close to what I thought might be a chough roost in old quarry buildings, was fruitless. I knew it was a long shot but I had found them roosting there in the past. And so it went.

The lack of inspiration I tend to experience during midsummer is partly due to external factors such as those mentioned above, I feel sure. But I was so fascinated to discover that the dog days of summer can be experienced internally too. The feeling of stagnation might not be so intense or long-lasting as that commonly felt and widely recognised as occurring in mid-winter, but it does exist. It’s not just me! This year I hadn’t taken a decent photograph for six weeks and it was beginning to feel a little bit more than temporary.

Through many years of observing and photographing the seasons I have felt that there is a turning point in the year around the middle of August. The change seems to happen quite suddenly. In an average year here in Wales the vegetation starts to die back and autumn colours start to appear. The nights are that much longer and there is more time for fog to form overnight. And there is a chance to get a decent nights sleep between sunrise and sunset!. It is also worth noting that the ancient Taoist philosophers identified a fifth season: “late summer”, lying between true summer and autumn . It is strongly associated with harvest and the bountiful produce that nature bestows upon us. Blackberry jam anyone?

It is also worth noting that at this time of year sunset is two minutes earlier each day than the previous one with a corresponding change at sunrise. The day is almost half-an-hour shorter altogether than it was one week earlier. I find this an astonishing fact, and of course the change would be even greater the closer to the poles one is situated.

Well, last week I headed over to Suffolk to do some bird photography. I had a nagging feeling that it might not be a profitable time of year, but off I went anyway. My day at Minsmere was a disappointment. Birds were largely noticeable by their absence. Bearing in mind that twelve “pairs” of bitterns had reared young there this year, and that there might have been something in the region of 40 or 50 individuals present, I saw just one. There was hardly a whisper of birdsong in the air. There were a few migrant waders to be seen but nothing like the numbers or variety that would be present later in the year. The reedbed – the whole place really – had a tiredness about it that was hard to put into words. Late summer? Perhaps. But it is no surprise that the BBC broadcasts “Springwatch” from there and not “Augustwatch”!

To follow Tales from Wild Wales, please scroll right to the bottom and click follow.

Urban peregrines

It is no secret that peregrine falcons have been nesting on Derby Cathedral tower for a number of years. A nesting platform was provided for them in 2006 and the same two adults have reared young every year since then. Progress of the breeding attempt can be followed on the internet, so I knew that this year the youngsters had fledged during the middle of June. Nevertheless young peregrines stay in the vicinity of the nest for some time after fledging so I thought a visit might still be worthwhile.

Last Wednesday I arrived in Derby to find no sign of the birds in the vicinity of the Cathedral. I spent a while recce-ing the area for a future visit. A good location would not be easy to find. But during my wandering I had noticed a bird perched on the lettering about fifteen stories up on the side of the Jury’s Inn Hotel not far away. Without binoculars it was not possible to tell if it was a peregrine or a feral pigeon, but I knew the peregrines sometimes perched or roosted there.

By early afternoon I had found my own perch – jammed in between the bridge railings and the eight-lane Derby Inner ring road as it crossed the River Derwent. Traffic screamed past just a couple of feet away from me. But I was exactly at right-angles to the side of the hotel where the bird was perching, and at about the optimum distance away. I spent an interesting afternoon there.

At one point a juvenile flew from the lettering to meet one of its parents about 150 feet above my head. The adult was carrying prey – a whole bird complete with two trailing legs – and the youngster turned over underneath him/her and took the prey in mid-air. I could just hear them screaming at each other above the roar of the traffic. The youngster took the prey on to the roof of a nearby block of flats to eat it. A few minutes later a peregrine (probably the same one) arrived, carrying the remains of a bird, and circled over my head, eating from its talons like a hobby does. As an ex-RSPB species protection warden I’ve spent many weeks (months!) watching peregrines but couldn’t remember ever seeing that before.

For long periods nothing at all happened. Every so often a yell would come from the passenger seat of a van as it flew past. There was a little to-ing and fro-ing as adult peregrine replaced juvenile on the lettering and vice versa. At one point the juvenile appeared to fall asleep with its chin on the letter “r” and its feet stretched out behind it! I pondered over the thought that these young peregrines would regard their urban surroundings as completely normal while their coastal cousins might find them absolutely abhorrent if they were to encounter them.

It was not a particularly challenging scene to photograph. I wanted to include the lettering as the environment within which these urban raptors lived their lives, so I set up the Canon 5d3 with long telephoto on a tripod and trained it on the side of the hotel. I would need to use the perspective control tools in Lightroom to try to disguise the upwards angle at which the images were taken, so I zoomed out a fair way to allow for the cropping that would come with it. I also needed to remember that the meter reading would need to be over-ridden to account for the largely white subject matter – in this case by about one stop, although had the side of the building been lit by the sun at least two stops would have been required. Probably the most important thing I needed was a great deal of patience, and in this case, by the side of the Derby inner ring-road – a slightly thicker skin than normal.

Postscript:

For information on the Derby Cathedral Peregrine Project, click here

To follow Tales from Wild Wales scroll right down to the bottom of the page and click Follow.

Close to perfection – photographing puffins on Skomer

On Tuesday I took the boat over to Skomer Island to photograph puffins. It wasn’t my first visit but this time the intention was to photograph them within the landscape. It is easy – all too easy, really – to get frame-filling close-ups of these approachable and entirely charming little creatures. The discipline for me would be to stand back and let the landscape speak as well.

It wasn’t a great start, to be honest. I woke early with the unmistakeable signs of a developing feverish cold. Arriving at Lockley Lodge about 7.30 am. I discovered that a significant queue had already formed. By the time I had checked in at West Hook Farm campsite and returned to Lockley Lodge there were already more than 60 people waiting. So, in the unlikely event that each person was queuing for themselves only, I still wouldn’t get the first boat. In fact I had to wait for the third, leaving at 11 a.m. I consoled myself with the knowledge that Martins Haven wasn’t exactly the worst place in the world to be waiting for public transport!

But taking into account the crossing, disembarkation, a long haul up steps with heavy gear, the obligatory welcome talk from the island warden, and then another mile’s trudge, it was nearly noon before I arrived at the Wick. The sun was almost at its highest already, and I hadn’t even started. Fellow photographer Andy Davies was there with one of his puffin photography workshop groups and I told him my heart just wasn’t in it. Occasionally puffins would fly in with beakfuls of sand eels. This was the “money shot”, the classic puffin image that everyone wanted; yes – even me! I swapped lenses several times, from long zoom to standard zoom, to medium telephoto, each time in reaction what had just happened, and in the hope and expectation that it would happen again. Not a healthy state of affairs. I wasn’t “seeing” anything.

It is difficult to describe the way puffins are at their colonies to those that have never experienced it. There is barely a hint of fear in their attitude to human onlookers. When one flies in with a beakful of fish it sometimes makes a rush for its burrow. But puffins are heavily predated on by herring gulls, which patrol the colony on a regular basis or stand back, just waiting for the opportunity to grab a load of fish. (In fact, research is taking place at the moment to discover if a crowd of people standing within the colony actually improves puffin productivity by discouraging the gulls.) At other times single puffins stand outside their burrows. One disappears underground and another pops up somewhere. One flies in and a couple fly off. One walks over to join its neighbours in a companionable manner. It looked as if they were having a good old gossip. Apart from an occasional argument with its flurry of clashing beaks and flailing wings it is all very relaxed.

Slowly and gradually I began to recognise the way the birds were part of the island landscape. I settled on my medium telephoto zoom lens and began watching as these small gaggles of puffins gathered and parted against the stunning background of the Wick, its aquamarine waters and rocky shores. I repeatedly walked backwards and forwards along the footpath to set bird against background. I felt that one puffin was just a distant portrait and had already been done a million times, two puffins together looked like a co-incidence, but groups of three, four and five….. now we’re talking! My main problem was depth of field and I sometimes made the mistake of estimating (well….guessing…) the hyperfocal distance and using that, rather than focussing on the birds. At the shorter end of the zoom at least I got back-to front sharpness in some cases. Elsewhere I planned to create panoramic images anyway so a sharp background wasn’t always important.

It was soon time to pack up my kit and begin the walk back to the jetty in time for the 4 p.m boat back to Martins Haven. My fever had continued to develop during the day and eight hours (altogether) out in the hot sun was definitely not what the doctor would have ordered. I must have looked far from cool in any possible sense of the word – laden with gear, wearing badly fitting sunshades and a wally-style sun hat. Nor was my mood any better. I managed to negotiate an extra hour on the island but was too knackered to take advantage of it. Fortunately I did not need to go anywhere that evening.

The next day I was too ill (man-flu, definitely…..) to do any more photography, unfortunately, so I drove home – a seemingly never-ending series of hold-ups, roadworks and traffic lights. I had a quick look at some of the images before going to bed and I was disgusted. They were all out of focus and I never, ever wanted to see another puffin again in my life! But it was the illness talking and on closer examination I seem to have covered most bases. Having said that a beakful of sandeels somewhere would have been perfection!

To follow Tales from Wild Wales, please scroll right down to the bottom and click the follow button