Saturday 26 June 2010

Farne Islands...Puffins Galore!

Last week I went to the Farne Islands, something I had wanted to do for some time. Timing has to be just right. First of all their is only a small window of opportunity, as the Puffins are only present there a couple of months in the year. Then the boats doesn´t always sail if the wind is above moderate. Then even when the wind has calmed down it may take another day or two until the swell of the sea to calm down, to make landing on the islands possible! Then if you are taking photographs, the light has to be good to capture the birds in flight, so you need a fast shutter speed (unless you have a £5,000 low lightlens, which I dont have!). So a lot has to come together all at the right time....and so last Tuesday was one of those perfect days!
I only managed to get a place on the boat due to a cancellation, and when I boarded the boat it was jammed pack with what looked like a seminar of Canon photographers, all with their big 400mm, 500mm lens, Manfrotto Tripods, and hats. (Will tell you later why the hats...in the Tern Blog)













2 comments:

  1. Fab puffins!

    Marcus
    www.ebirder.net

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  2. Wow, great shots, Mark!

    Most impressed and, again, you seem to have changed your site setup. I must try the same; moving to a "non-white" did at least show up the white borders round my shots.
    Introduced a friend recently and the only templates on offer were the updates which did not include samples such as yours where you easily can add photos in home page.

    Keep up the good work

    Bob

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