How to photograph – Puffins

Puffins must rank as one of the favourite species for a wildlife photographer to work with; their wonderfully coloured bills and their formal black and white suits give them a comic look that is hard to resist.

A bit about Puffins

Puffins are one of the most easily recognisable birds in the world and many a child has exhausted their crayon supply while enthusiastically colouring in a picture of these wonderful little characters.  But we actually  only see them in the UK for a relatively short period of their lives; they are true sea birds and spend the majority of their year in the North Sea and the North Atlantic and only return to land for a few short months to breed.

So if you want to see and photograph a Puffin then you need to choose the right time and the right place, the odds are that one isn’t going to turn up at a Birmingham reservoir in October!  You will need to visit one of the fantastic Puffin colonies in the UK between April and August, once their chicks have fledged they are back off out to see and you will have missed your chance. 

The places that you are most likely to get good photography opportunities are at the breeding colonies at Bempton Cliffs (N Yorks), South Stack (Anglesey), the Farne Islands (Northumberland), the Isle of May (off the Fife coast) and the Shetland and Orkney Islands.

Timing is everything – I have visited the Farne Island on many occasions and in late August there is hardly a Puffin to be found; it is as if someone rings a bell and they all leave at once.

What you need to get the image you want

In places like the Farne Islands the challenge isn’t finding the bird, in the breeding season they are literally everywhere, but getting the right images.  Many people find that presented with tens of thousands of subjects to choose from they end up pointing the camera everywhere and being unhappy with the end results.

My advice is to have a plan and stick to it.  Decide what you want from your visit, whether it is birds in flight, on the cliffs, etc. and don’t be distracted from your goal; it is all too easy to fill a memory card with second rate images.

Once you have your plan focus on that and try to maximise your opportunities to be successful.  So if you want images of Puffins on cliff tops then get yourself into a good position (think about composition carefully) and be ready.  Puffins use the cliff tops as congregational sites so there are always good opportunities for group shots.  If you want Puffins on the ground amongst the grass and flowers then you need to be near the burrows where they nest and capture them as they come and go.

Puffins in flight tend to be what most people go for and they are much harder to capture than you would think. However there are some tips and tricks to help improve your chances.  Clearly they arrive from the sea, but they will also usually try to land facing into the wind; if you are facing into that same wind your task is harder, stand with the wind to your back.  I try and focus on an individual bird, pick it up out to sea and hope it comes in close to you, then track that bird until you can get the image.  Standing with your camera to your eye and following birds as they zoom past is a sure way to miss things and give yourself a headache.  Where you stand is key.  On the Farne Islands, for example, there is a little dip in the middle of Inner Farne and when you stand there the first time you see a Puffin in flight is when it is almost on top of you.  This is a great area for photographing birds on the ground but quite possibly the worst place for in-flight shots – you need to be on the cliff tops or somewhere with a good panoramic view.

The Technical bit

Puffins are quite tricky to get right.  Their black and white plumage makes exposure tricky and there is the problem of overexposing the white chest and the colourful bill.  Manage your exposure carefully and make sure you underexpose for the light conditions in order to retain detail across the whole bird.  The principle of exposing correctly is covered in my How to photograph Black-headed Gulls guide so I won’t repeat it here.

Another challenge with Puffins is that they fly like missiles!  On land they look like they shouldn’t be able to get in the air, their wings look far too small for those fat little bodies!  And it is almost true; their wings are much better suited for swimming than flying and so when in the sky they have to flap their wings up to 200 times a minute.  If the light isn’t good enough and you are stuck with a slow shutter speed you have the problem of fast moving birds with very fast moving wings and blurred images.  A little bit of wing blur can work well at conveying the feeling of movement, but too much and the image isn’t useable.  Aim for a shutter speed of at least 1/500s to minimise blur.

One of the great things about photographing Puffins at their breeding colonies is that you don’t need a long lens to do so – in fact a long lens is probably a disadvantage as the birds get so close.  I have been to colonies where then birds literally walk between your legs and you could use your camera phone to take images of them.  Depending on what type of images you are after your lens choice can vary from a wide-angle (for shots near the burrow) to your longer option for in flight and cliff tops (using wide-angle lenses at cliff tops is not recommended – stay back from the edge and use the lens to reach the bird).

Conclusion

We have all grown familiar with images of Puffins and their bright faces have adorned books, tea towels and mugs for many decades and they remain understandably popular for photographers. 

They aren’t hard to get close to, but you must choose your time carefully; there is no point looking for them out of breeding season. 

Don’t be drawn in to trying to do too much at once as you are likely to disappoint yourself.  Once you have your plan, stick to it and you are more likely to end the day happy.