More Than Puffins

When you head out on a puffin-focused photography tour, you probably have a pretty good idea of what you're hoping to photograph.

Puffins.

Lots of puffins.

And yes, there were plenty of them.

But after spending a few days on the coast with a camera in my hands, I've been thinking about how misleading that description can actually be.

Because a good wildlife photography trip is rarely just about the animal you set out to find.

There is always something else happening.

Birds, Photography and Fellowship

There was another part of this particular tour that made the experience especially memorable.

The couple I had with me on this tour were not English speakers.

That presented some challenges, of course. There were moments when communication took a little more patience, a little more creativity and sometimes a few hand gestures.

But something interesting happened along the way.

We found a common language.

Birds.

Photography.

And fellowship.

You don't necessarily need the same words to share the excitement of a bird suddenly appearing in front of you, to point out something interesting, to celebrate a great photograph or to laugh together at something that happened during the day.

Those moments became part of the experience too.

For a few days, the three of us were brought together by a shared fascination with birds, photography and the places that brought us together.

And honestly, I think that's one of the things I'll remember most about this tour.

The language barrier was real, but it never prevented us from sharing the experience.

The Puffins

The puffins were, of course, the reason for the trip.

And I don't think I'll ever get tired of photographing them.

There is something about sitting near a colony and watching these little birds go about their lives that keeps pulling me back..

You're not simply photographing a bird sitting on a rock.

You're watching them arrive, disappear into burrows, interact with each other, carry nesting material, land, take off and occasionally just stand there looking like they have absolutely no idea how ridiculously photogenic they are.

And then there are those little moments that feel almost private.

On our second day, as we were getting close to the final hour of the tour, I captured a puffin emerging from its burrow.

I've watched puffins come and go from their burrows for years, but I've never been this close to one as it emerged.

For just a moment, it felt less like I was observing wildlife and more like I had been invited into a friend's home..

Those are the photographs I really want.

Not simply what the animal looked like, but something of what it felt like to be there.

Learning to Step Back

That experience has also been feeding into something I've been experimenting with in my own photography.

For years, the instinct was pretty straightforward.

Find the animal.

Fill the frame.

Make the portrait.

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I still love a good tight wildlife portrait.

But lately I've been more interested in showing the world around the animal.

Sometimes that means shooting through vegetation.

Sometimes the bird is partially obscured.

Sometimes the foreground becomes part of the photograph.

And sometimes the animal is small in the frame because the landscape around it is part of the story.

I've jokingly thought of some of these as my "peek-a-boo" puffins.

They're not necessarily the cleanest or most traditional wildlife portraits.

But they can feel more intimate.

They give you a sense of where the animal actually lives.

I've also started shooting in-camera at 16:9 more often. That's a deliberate choice. Rather than simply cropping to that ratio afterward, I'm trying to train my eye to see a more cinematic frame while I'm actually working in the field.

It's changing the way I think about negative space, foreground, background and where the animal sits within the landscape.

And the Canon RF 100-500mm has been a powerful new addition to my toolbox. Its flexibility has opened up some really interesting possibilities for working with distance, foreground and environmental elements while still maintaining a strong connection with the subject.

But I'm not trying to replace the traditional wildlife portrait.

There will always be a mix.

Sometimes I want every detail of a face and every feather.

Sometimes I want the peek-a-boo shot.

Sometimes I want to pull way back and let the landscape tell half the story.

The important part for me is continuing to experiment.

Photography would get pretty boring if I ever decided I had it all figured out.

And Then There Are the Other Birds

A puffin-focused tour doesn't mean puffins are the only birds we encounter.

Far from it.

While the puffins may be the main attraction, there is always something else moving around the coastline..

This trip gave us a nice variety. Shorebirds working the edges of the water, terns hunting overhead, gulls drifting through the scene, sparrows perched on the rocks, and black guillemots working the shoreline.

Some were cooperative.

Some weren't.

Some gave me a few seconds to work with before disappearing.

And some, like the terns, seemed determined to make me work for every frame.

That's one of the things I really enjoy about photographing birds.

You never quite know what you're going to get.

Different species behave differently, the light changes constantly, and sometimes the photograph you weren't expecting ends up being one of your favourites.

It also keeps you looking.

You might be waiting for a puffin to do something interesting when a tern suddenly crosses your frame.

Or you're watching the water when a shorebird steps into exactly the right spot.

The trick is not to become so focused on what you came to photograph that you miss everything else happening around you.

There is always another bird.

Another behaviour.

Another photograph waiting to happen.

And Then You Put the Telephoto Down

Even when the entire purpose of the tour is wildlife photography, Newfoundland keeps presenting you with landscapes that demand your attention.

The light changes.

The weather rolls through.

The sky opens up.

A little community catches the evening light.

A house sits against a darkening sky.

And sometimes you find yourself pointing the camera at the landscape instead of the bird you came to photograph.

I've been thinking about that a lot lately.

I've been experimenting with pulling back from the traditional wildlife portrait and showing more of the world these creatures live in.

But that doesn't mean every photograph needs an animal in it.

Sometimes the landscape itself has something to say.

And honestly, I don't think I'll ever settle into one approach.

There will always be the tight portrait.

There will be the environmental portrait, where the animal becomes part of the landscape.

And there will be photographs where the animal isn't there at all because the landscape itself is the photograph.

That's what experimentation is about for me.

Not replacing one approach with another, but adding more tools to the way I see.

And Then the Highway Closed

By the time the tour was coming to an end, I thought I had pretty much finished the photographic part of the story.

Then Newfoundland had other ideas.

A serious accident resulted in a seven-hour shutdown of the Trans-Canada Highway.

What should have been a straightforward drive home turned into hours of waiting, and ultimately meant that I had to stay in St. John's for an extra night.

It wasn't exactly how I had planned to finish the trip.

But sometimes you just have to make the best of things.

I had already dropped my guests off the night before, so the tour itself was over. The unexpected extra night simply gave me a little more time in St. John's.

I took advantage of it for an impromptu work meeting, and once that was taken care of, I headed out with my camera to walk the beach in Kelligrews.

And once again, there were birds.

Lots of them.

Shorebirds, terns, gulls of various sorts, and another encounter with a kingfisher who continues to tease me every time I see one.

One of these days, I am going to get that kingfisher-in-flight photograph.

Today wasn't that day.

But I came home with photographs I wouldn't have made if the highway had stayed open.

A completely different setting.

A completely different collection of birds.

A completely unexpected photographic opportunity.

And somehow, that felt like a pretty appropriate ending to the trip.

More Than Puffins

We started out looking for puffins.

We photographed puffins emerging from burrows and going about their lives.

We experimented with different ways of seeing them.

We photographed other birds, landscapes and changing light.

We shared photographs, experiences and plenty of moments despite not always sharing the same spoken language.

The common language was birds, photography and fellowship.

And then, on the way home, a highway shutdown gave me one more unexpected photographic opportunity of my own.

Looking back through the photographs now, I realize that the story of this tour isn't really about puffins at all.

It's about paying attention.

It's about being willing to experiment.

It's about looking beyond the obvious subject.

It's about the people you share the experience with.

And it's about being ready when something unexpected happens.

Sometimes you have to go looking for the photograph.

Sometimes you just have to pay attention when the photograph finds you.

And sometimes the best part of a photography tour is everything that happens between the photographs you thought you were going to make.

That's what I'll take away from this one.

More than puffins.

Newfoundland Photo Tours