{"id":2389,"date":"2014-06-02T14:41:11","date_gmt":"2014-06-02T13:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2389"},"modified":"2014-06-25T11:40:59","modified_gmt":"2014-06-25T10:40:59","slug":"choosing-your-battles-farne-islands-bespoke-photography-trip-31052014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/choosing-your-battles-farne-islands-bespoke-photography-trip-31052014","title":{"rendered":"Choosing your battles; Farne Islands bespoke photography trip 31\/05\/2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Thursday should have been a bespoke photography trip to the Farne Islands<\/a>, but a discussion with William on Wednesday evening confirmed what the forecast had been suggesting for a few days – heavy easterly swell would make it impractical to sail.\u00a0 I was out and about in the drizzle so Sarah got in touch with John, David and Sheila and we rearranged the trip for Saturday instead.<\/p>\n

That turned out to be an excellent decision, with\u00a0 Saturday dawning dry, bright, sunny and with only a hint of a breeze.\u00a0 We arrived in Seahouses just after 09:00 and were soon onboard Glad Tidings II, with William at the helm, on our way to Staple Island, passing groups of Grey Seals<\/strong> <\/em>lazing in the sunshine.\u00a0 Staple can be a difficult island to land passengers on, but it’s always worth the effort.\u00a0 Puffins<\/strong> <\/em>with beakfuls of sandeels<\/strong> <\/em>were next to the landing and many photographers from our boat didn’t make it any further on to the island for quite some time.\u00a0 Fulmars, Kittiwakes, Shags, Guillemots <\/strong><\/em>and Razorbills<\/strong><\/em> are all good photographic subjects, Puffins<\/strong> <\/em>are the real stars of the island but there were some very accessible female Eiders<\/strong> <\/em>incubating too. A frequent mantra that I try to instill into our photography clients is to choose their battles carefully – whatever focal length lens you have, there’s always the opportunity to take stunning images.\u00a0 Don’t frustrate yourself by trying to over-reach the performance of your equipment.\u00a0 I had a camera with a 70-200mm lens in my rucksack – not a long focal length, but enough when you’ve got a subject quite close.\u00a0 We explored bits of the island looking for a spot that offered Puffins<\/strong> <\/em>in flight at reasonable distance, and the best bit of the morning on Staple came during our lunch break, when\u00a0 Puffins<\/strong> <\/em>were flying so close overhead that you could hear the whirring of their wings, and everyone sat back, relaxed and tried to second-guess which direction each Puffin<\/strong> <\/em>was going to fly \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 With a lovely group of clients, the day was a real pleasure, and we were soon on Glad Tidings IV, transferring to Inner Farne for the afternoon.\u00a0 Inner Farne offers similar to Staple, but with the addition of Common, Arctic <\/strong><\/em>and Sandwich Terns <\/strong><\/em>and we explored the island in search of photographic subjects.\u00a0 The first three images below are my own.\u00a0 Puffin<\/strong><\/em>in flight, Black-headed Gull<\/strong><\/em> tussling with Puffin<\/strong><\/em>, Arctic Tern<\/strong><\/em> and Common Tern<\/strong><\/em> images are all (c) J. Spence.\u00a0 Many thanks to John for letting us use his stunning images in this blog post \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Beautiful weather, great clients and the ‘Galapagos of the North’ – what a great end to the month, although for NEWT the month wasn’t quite over yet…<\/p>\n

\"Photography<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Common<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Atlantic<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Atlantic<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Atlantic<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Common<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Arctic<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Thursday should have been a bespoke photography trip to the Farne Islands, but a discussion with William on Wednesday evening confirmed what the forecast had been suggesting for a few days – heavy easterly swell would make it impractical to sail.\u00a0 I was out and about in the drizzle so Sarah got in touch […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11,5,16],"tags":[230,229,149,122,835,186,301,225,226,631,223,377],"class_list":["post-2389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-farnes","category-northumberland","category-photography","tag-arctic-tern","tag-common-tern","tag-eider","tag-fulmar","tag-grey-seal","tag-guillemot","tag-kittiwake","tag-puffin","tag-razorbill","tag-sandeel","tag-sandwich-tern","tag-shag"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2389"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2443,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2389\/revisions\/2443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}