The problem with puffins

Puffin - Bempton

Puffin - Inner Farne Island

Puffin - Skomer island

First off some house keeping.   I took 2485 images this morning out of which I kept 418 which is a 17% hit rate - about right for the type of photography I was doing today.  I think I have got some very interesting images that I think I can make into first class photographs.  It is noticeable that my standards have risen markedly over the past few visits to Bempton.   Images that may well have been kept on my first visit only get the most cursory examination before being deleted.  This is especially true of Gannet images.   After a while one image of a Gannet flying overhead tends to look like the next.  This is progress and I have to say I am happy with the situation.

This brings me nicely to the question of Puffins.   The RSPB makes a big thing about the puffins at Bempton and yes there are a relatively large number of them.  However, the views are to say the least restricted.  They spend most of their day sitting on the chalk cliffs which on a very bright day posses some real problems.  Also even with a very powerful lens the resultant image is not that impactive.   To show this compare the the three photographs. I think the the Bempton is a distant third of the three.  

So what does this mean?  Well, first I have try harder to make the photographs more interesting.  One idea may well be to try High Dynamic Range (HDR)- the Bempton photograph has a shutter speed of 1/8000 th so this give plenty of scope to implement a HDR experiment.   This, however, is incidental to the main problem.  Puffins are just not as accessible at Bempton than at the Farnes or Skomer.  Can't wait to visit both site in the next month.