There are wildlife encounters you photograph—and others you experience with every sense.
These two Crested Auklets were perched together on a cliff ledge during my Saint Paul Island photography workshop in Alaska’s remote Pribilof Islands.
For about 30 minutes, we watched them mutually preening, listened to their remarkable vocalizations and could even smell the citrus-like scent released from their plumage.
Mutual preening, also called allopreening, is associated with courtship and helps reinforce the pair bond. It was fascinating to watch, but photographing it was another matter.
The birds were backlit and constantly moving their heads as they worked around each other’s face, crest and neck. At 1,200mm, the depth of field was extremely limited. The challenge was to capture the fleeting instant when both eyes were visible, neither bill obscured the other and both of those extraordinary crests remained clearly defined.
I chose f/16 for as much depth of field as possible, kept my shutter speed at 1/4,000 second for their constantly moving heads and accepted ISO 25,600 as the cost of making the photograph.
The backlight created the nearly white, high-key background, but it still had enough direction to produce a subtle rim highlight along the right side of the bird on the left. That narrow edge of light separates the overlapping dark plumage and gives the photograph depth. Without it, the two birds could easily have merged into a single dark mass.
The citrus scent is one of the most extraordinary things about Crested Auklets. During the breeding season, volatile compounds in their plumage produce an odour often compared to tangerines. You can read about it, but actually standing there on the edge of the Bering Sea—watching the birds interact, hearing their calls and smelling that unmistakable scent—is something else entirely.
Thirty minutes with the birds gave me plenty of opportunities to press the shutter, but only brief fractions of a second when both head positions came together.
Time with the birds created the opportunity. Waiting for the right moment created the photograph.
Join me on Saint Paul Island for extraordinary seabirds, intimate wildlife encounters and seven full days of photography in the heart of the Bering Sea.