Photographing Puffins on Skomer Island

It's that fantastic time of year again when we can set sail for Skomer Island in West Wales, UK – one of my favourite places, open once more for feathery, fun business. So I thought this an opportune time to give a little guidance on photographing puffins for anyone lucky enough to visit.

Puffins start landing in April but the height of avian action is June to July when the chicks have hatched and the parents are bringing their young sandeel takeaways. 

Located just a mile off the Pembrokeshire coast, Skomer has a large population of the wonderful ‘Sea Parrot’, the puffin, with around 30,000 birds that magically whizz above your head or waddle past your feet. It is also home to the largest population of Manx Shearwater in the world (although you won’t see them as they are nocturnal), other Auks too, razorbill, guillemot, as well as a myriad of other avian chums, such as short eared owl, curlew, gulls, kittiwake, fulmar and depending on the time of year Atlantic seals, dolphin etc.

All the pointers below can of course be used for any wildlife photography but I hope this helps you maximise your time, as a day visit is unfortunately short at only 5 hours and you will be surprised how time will fly (yes, pun intended).

ON THE ISLAND

If you haven’t visited before, please be aware that as you disembark the boat there are eighty plus steep steps to climb, it is also a trek of around 4 miles to wander fully around (although most stick to puffin central) and the only toilet is at the farm which is in the middle of the island, with the puffins being on the outside of the island! I won’t go into too much detail about locations but if like most you are visiting for the puffins, North Haven (where you land) and High Cliff are good places but most will end up at the Wick, which is excellent for portraits and close-ups.

Please be ever so mindful of the puffins, we are there for fun, whilst they are in a life and death struggle. Look to see if they want to pass you and step back (yes, they are that close) to let them cross. Please stick to the paths as the whole island is covered in burrows, potentially all filled with eggs or young and it’s easy to disturb or even ruin them.

A BRIEF SKOMER PUFFIN DIARY

April: Puffins start arriving to recolonise nests, maybe do a little courting, meet up with a few friends for drinks and nibbles or maybe even a ‘bit of the other’ to carry on the lineage. Their stunning beaks are only in its resplendent glory during this short breeding period, after that its back to ‘Dullsville’.

May: The female produces one egg in early May and the parents will take it in turns to sit on it. Look out for short-eared owls during this period hunting over the bluebells. 

June: The young pufflings are born (that really is their name) but rarely seen and the parents take it in turns to find and feed them with sandeels. The sky turns into a spectacular feathery firework display, a constant flurry of activity that is a fantastic sight to behold.

July: The pufflings are making their first wary appearances. They are dark grey and white puffin balls with big eyes. Keep looking at a nest and you may see one peering around.

August: They are almost gone and only a few stragglers remain, soon to disappear with the rest back to the Atlantic.

THE CLASSIC

If it’s the puffin, you will want it to pop out of the image by rendering it sharp but with your foreground and background diffuse and creamy, the classic wildlife portrait.

• Look to use a long lens that will allow you to isolate the puffin. Any of the long lenses will work great but also think about using the 40-150mm with its f/2.8 aperture and should you have one, try using a tele converter.
• Scan for a suitable background that is as uncluttered as possible, preferably sympathetic to the image. It’s amazing how moving a few inches either way can change the look of a photo, so experiment, don’t stick to the first shot.
• Get as low as possible to the puffin so you are able to shoot at eye level and possibly with the foreground visible so you can render it diffuse (you don’t have to have any foreground).
• Set your aperture as wide open as necessary to blur any foreground but with enough depth of field to capture the puffin in as much detail as required whilst blurring the background. Try a few test shots to check and fine tune. Wide open apertures mean the smaller f/ numbers such as f/2.8, f/4 or the lowest available on your lens and closing down your lens means the other way with higher f numbers. Depth of field will depend on multiple variables, your lens length, depth of field, how close you are to the Puffin and how close you are to your background.
• Use the smallest single focus point on the head/eye and remember if the eye is not sharp a portrait is almost certainly not going to work. For those with Bird AI now’s the time to use it.
• Think about your composition, have the puffin to one side looking into the largest space or if it’s looking at you, more central. The rule of thirds can work well but it’s only a guide.
• Even though getting low works, keep an open mind and explore other options, heights, angles etc.

The Puffins are so used to humans that they practically trip you up in some places and on occasions you may well be too close whilst using a long lens which leads to a very shallow depth of field with little room for error. You may also find that your lens will not focus close enough, if that’s the case you could use an extension tube, change lenses or even use those feet of yours and move backwards. Due to the shallow depth of field, if you shoot at the eyes, you may find the beak will be out of focus. That’s not necessarily a problem but if you want the beak in focus, try to shoot at the beak and close down the lens, starting at f/8, this may render both beak and eyes sharp depending on how close you are. Remember depth of field is one third in front and two thirds behind your focus point.

IN THE LANDSCAPE

If you are looking to include the habitat/landscape (and it’s well worth it) there are multiple options.

• Look for a background that will be worthy of capturing. It can be anything from flowers (especially thrift on Skomer) to the larger environment. • The basics of capture are the same but this time you will need to use larger apertures.
• You will need to stop down your long lenses heavily (larger numbers) to render everything sharp and even then, will probably fail.
• So you will be better off using wide-angle or shorter standard lenses that will allow more depth of field. If you are using a wide-angle you will need to be very close to a puffin to have it large in the frame, so be careful however it’s a great lens to capture the greater environment.
• Compositionally try to be selective with what you include in your frame, a dull or messy background will detract from your puffin, so scan the viewfinder.

BEHAVIOUR SHOTS

The puffin has such a great range of expressions and interactions that are crying out to be captured. Look for male and female bonding, puffin fights (they can be quite feisty), face contortions, feeding, mouths full of sand eels etc. Look out too for attacking gulls trying to nab their sandeel catch.

For a pseudo flight shot look out for a standing puffin flap, like all birds they flap the wings to shake themselves down and to preen. Use the previous method but to capture them sharp, keep an eye out for reasonable shutter speeds as they never stop moving and as good as IBIS (in- body image stabilisation) Image is to stop the shakes, it won’t help you with a moving bird. You will also need to use a larger aperture so there is enough depth of field to account for the wing movement.

EASIEST METHOD

The least difficult but by no means easy way, is to capture these feather blurs flying against as uncluttered a background as possible such as the sky, calm water or grass. Your auto-focus won’t be distracted as much and hopefully will get its mind in the game and concentrate on the puffin.

GENERAL SETTINGS 

• Select all or a large number of focus points, let the camera do the work.
• Continuous auto-focus, continuous shooting, machine gun mode!
• Exposure compensation to suit conditions. If you are shooting into the blue sky/bright sea probably at least plus 1 to 2 stops to expose your bird properly. Remember you are exposing for the puffin and not the background.
• ISO and shutter speed. Use a high shutter speed of anything from 1/1000th but preferably more. The higher the shutter speed the more chance you have of capturing it sharp so use your ISO to bump up the shutter speed. Don’t worry about high ISO because if your photograph is blurred you are only going to delete it anyway so what have you got to lose. I am happy with wing blur and movement streaks so you don’t necessarily need high shutter speeds, it’s down to your preference and light available.
• Aperture. If you have the light to allow a fast shutter speed, a relatively high aperture of f/8 or higher will help as you have more leeway with the enlarged depth of field if the autofocus doesn’t quite catch the bird in the right place. Autofocus will pick an area with the highest contrast and sometimes that’s not the eye which should be sharp (if it’s not a panning shot and even then, it works better if it is). Remember the smaller the aperture (bigger numbers), the less shutter speed you will have, so you need to up the ISO to compensate.
• Aim. Try and aim for the head (eye even) and place the bird relatively centrally if it’s big in the frame.

MY SETTINGS FOR…PUFFINS AT 12 O’CLOCK

• Aperture of f/4 to f/8. This will give you the fastest shutter speed, a more diffuse background but a harder job of keeping your Puffin in focus.
• ISO as high as necessary to achieve the highest shutter speed. Remember everything doesn’t need to be sharp.
• C-AF +2 as that “puff” is Mr or Mrs Erratic!
• Single point or 5/9-point grouping. 

A FEW OTHER THINGS

• Puffins often fly towards their nest but abort at the last moment. They then make another pass or maybe several before actually landing. Use this to your advantage and watch the puffin all the way through your viewfinder. This will give your camera focus a helping hand to catch up rather than expecting it to lock on, unawares. I actually use back-button focusing but I think this is where the conventional method is better as you are able to move the focus point around whilst shooting. If you use back-button your thumb is being used for focusing.
• You can also use manual focusing (or back-button and disengage focusing) to pre-focus on a certain spot and wait for the puffin to fly into your focus path. Try using a fairly big aperture of f/11 to allow that wiggle room. This method is very hit and miss as you don’t know if the little darlings will fly exactly into your path and you are dependent on a small number of puffins using that area.
• Try as many combinations as you can to find something that works for you, as in all photography there is no real right and wrong, just find a way!
• Try panning to give your shot a sense of movement, doesn’t always work but it looks great when it does and this has the added bonus of not needing as quick a shutter speed. Lower the ISO right down and also use a small aperture of f/11 or more to slow the shutter speed down. This will also have the benefit of catching more of the puffin in shot.
• No ‘Carry On’ jokes please but wind can be your friend. Wind conditions can be helpful as birds will often use the wind to take off and fly into as it makes it easier for them, just like planes (where do you think humans got the idea from?). It’s often cited they can’t fly with the wind, that is not true. So, if you have a nice breeze check the direction, plonk yourself down and watch the direction the birds are flying in. If they are using the wind to land, point yourself in that direction.
• Keep on the lookout – You never know what you will see

Instagram: @robcottleimages

Rob Cottle is an “image maker, workshop taker, critter lover and veganist” with a love for wildlife.