Puffin

It was two years since I had been to the magical Great Saltee Island when I took this photo.  The covid restrictions and my own personal concerns of travelling in uncertain time prevented me from going to the island in 2020.  The season for getting puffin photos was drawing to a close when I made the journey on the 19th of July.  The benefit of going so late in the season going was that the island was not over run with photographers. For much of the evening, my small bunch of friends were the only people on the island, allowing us to appreciate the beauty of the habitat and the sea birds in the peaceful and tranquil setting.

Among my bunch of friends the challenge was puffin with daisies (too late for the classic sea pink flower), puffin with a mouthful of sand eels and flying puffins. I think we all managed the shot with the daisies. Only two photographers managed the sand eels (perhaps when the rest of us went to photograph the gannets).  It was a scorching hot day and the puffins were not in the mood for fishing!  As evening fell, two of my mates tried coaching me on the flying shot, a real Achilles heel for me.  Amid calls of 'incoming' I would frantically try to focus, hold my breath and keep my finger pressed on the shutter for a burst of shots while praying that one might work out.  Those two mates will never let me live down my reaction to seeing this shot in the back of the camera.  It was along the line of 'oh look his little dangly feet are sharp'.   I think the word 'cute' might also have been in the exclamation. 

My shutter speed for this shot was 1/2500 sec., which was slower than what I was previously using.  The aperture was f5.6 and auto ISO was 2500.  The tactic for this shot had changed following the advice I moved from fully zoomed at 400mm to 200mm and it did help.