puffin
Not another puffin picture!
I know, I know. The Internet seems swamped these days with more images than ever of this charismatic little fella. But who can blame a photographer for wanting to photograph them?! They are extremely numerous and very approachable. Getting something different then, becomes increasingly difficult.
I have recently been accepted by a second picture library (I have been with my other, FLPA, for 10 years now) called Wildlife GmbH, in Germany and as a result, I am in the process of submitting material to them, one of which is of this puffin in flight.
Atlantic puffin in flight.
Taken on Skomer a few years ago, I stayed for a couple of nights to photograph these and manx shearwaters. Manx shearwaters are incredible birds spending most of it’s life at sea, only returning to land at night to feed it’s young. Why at night? In nutshell, they are are very clumsy on land due to their legs being set far back towards their tale and so if they were to come ashore during the day, they would end up as dinner to gulls and the like. Anyway, back to the puffin. On my second day, fog rolled in along with strong winds. I fitted my flash-unit to attempt the flash-and-blur technique. If you pull it off it can be quite effective with the resulting image exhibiting both sharp and blurred elements giving the impression of movement. It’s relatively simple to do too. Select a slow shutter speed of say 1/30th sec. and your TTL flash-unit to -1. With the flash unit set to minus one stop the effect will be subtle though evident. Experimentation is the key here as the speed of the subject, it’s direction and distance will determine both shutter speed and flash output.
Expectations
Do we expect too much from our images? Since going digital and holding countless workshops, I wonder if we just expect too much from our pictures? By that I mean, there seems to be a widely held belief, particularly amongst those new to digital, that every part of the resulting processed image should hold detail. Is it really that imperative to have detail in all the dark areas, need we fret should a light part of the scene be blinking on our LCD panel on the rear of the camera?
In those far flung days of yonder when Iused film (excuse me while I look back wistfully!) exposure was a relatively simple process. If a light subject such as a swan occupied the majority of the frame, you would expose for it and not care a hoot about the darker areas. It was up to the film you were using as to how much detail would be produced and likewise with a dark subject.
With such a high contrast image, obtaining detail in every part would be almost impossible. Taken with film, I exposed for the sunlit green leaves of the campion and let everything else take care of itself. A kind of middle ground.
Now it seems, many photographers, and to a small degree myself, are obsessed with masks, layers, dodge and burn tools and anything else for that matter, to bring every single bit of detail out from a scene. Sure, processing an image is an essential part of the image making process and we have to be careful how to expose for a scene, to be mindful of those areas that may end up too light (sky for example) or too dark (this is where ND grads come into their own) but I feel very strongly that we also have to remember why we are taking pictures in the first instance. Speaking for myself, it’s to spend as much time as possible in the field producing images of the natural world. This I endeavour to do to the best of my ability and not to spend hour after hour staring at the computer screen!
About Robert Canis
Robert Canis is a professional photographer specialising in the natural world.
Read more about Robert Canis
