Tufted Puffin Portrait OUT OF THE SHADOWS

There are few experiences as captivating as observing wildlife in their natural habitat, and for me, one of the most profound is on the remote cliffs of Saint Paul Island, Alaska. As a workshop leader, guiding participants to the very edges of dramatic cliff faces, we're often privileged to witness a breathtaking spectacle: seabirds, silhouetted in the dramatic shadows cast by their towering homes, bustling with life.

Saint Paul Island is a jewel among the Pribilof Islands, a small archipelago nestled in the vast expanse of the Bering Sea, a watery frontier between Alaska and Russia. This isolation is precisely what makes it such a vital haven for millions of migratory birds, transforming its rugged cliffs into bustling, cacophonous cities of feathers and squawks during breeding season.

Among the many species that call Saint Paul Island home, the Tufted Puffin stands out as a true icon. With their distinctive bright orange bills, white facial plumes, and human-hair-like "tufts" of golden feathers streaming back from their eyes, they are beautiful and fun to photograph. Saint Paul Island boasts significant breeding colonies of these charismatic birds, offering unparalleled opportunities for observation and photography.

Of course, getting to such a remote and wild place presents its own set of challenges. Air travel to Saint Paul Island has been an adventure in recent years. But for those dedicated to experiencing this extraordinary ecosystem firsthand, the rewards are immeasurable.

And speaking of rewards, I'm thrilled to announce that I'm working on something truly special for 2026 to make these incredible cliffside encounters even more accessible. Stay tuned for details – Saint Paul Island is calling, and I can't wait to share its wonders with you.

Tufted Puffin Vertical Portrait(Fratercula cirrhata, Macareux huppe, Frailecillo coletudo, TUPU) Saint Paul Island, AK ©Christopher Dodds Sony Alpha a9 Mirrorless Camera & Sony FE 400 f/2.8 GM OSS with Sony FE 2X Teleconverter @800mm. ISO 1,600, f/16 @ 1/800s Manual Exposure mode. Join me for my Saint Paul Island, AK workshop next July to learn more CLICK HERE.

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Don't Miss Out! Last Chance for Atlantic Puffin Photography in Quebec!

Two spots have unexpectedly become available due to cancellation for my highly sought-after and consistently sold-out Deluxe Atlantic Puffins Galore workshop, taking place from August 10 to 13, 2025, in beautiful Quebec! Due to last-minute cancellations, this is your rare opportunity to join an unforgettable photography experience.

This workshop is perfectly timed to maximize your chances of capturing those iconic shots of Atlantic Puffins with their beaks absolutely brimming with fish. Imagine filling your portfolio with incredible, dynamic images!

As always, this deluxe experience includes charming lighthouse accommodations and gourmet meals, ensuring your comfort and enjoyment throughout the trip. Click the image below to learn more.

Tufted Puffin dorsal view in flight & Top 10 Puffin Facts

Top 10 Puffin Facts:

10. Puffins only possess Technicolor bills—and their matching orange feet—during the spring breeding season. Just before winter sets in, they shed the colorful outer bill, leaving a noticeably smaller and duller-colored beak.

9. There are four species of puffins, three of which are slightly distinguishable from one another. The Atlantic and horned puffins look quite similar, with the exception of a blue-grey triangle at the base of the Atlantic puffin’s beak. During the mating season, straw-like feathers protrude from the crown of the tufted puffin’s head. The fourth species, the rhinoceros auklet, doesn’t look like the other three – it’s ashen colored, with a rhino-like protrusion during the breeding season. But it’s still technically a puffin.

8. The puffins’ genus name, Fratercula, comes from the Latin for “little brother.” The name refers to the sea bird’s black and white plumage, which was said to resemble the robes that monks once wore.

7. A puffin weighs about the same as a can of Coke.

6. Puffins lay just one egg per year—and usually with the same mate. Like some penguins, both parents take turns incubating the egg and caring for the chick.

5. Puffins may chatter up a storm at their breeding colonies, but they remain perfectly silent while at sea.

4. There are currently eight isles around the world named Puffin Island—so named because they all are or once were home to large colonies of puffins.

3. A puffin can fly as fast as 55 mph. Compared with other auks, which tend to stay just a few feet above the sea, puffins usually maintain a cruising altitude of around 30 feet.

2. brilliantly colored beaks of Atlantic Puffins also light-up -- like a glow stick! -- when exposed to ultra-violet (UV) light.

1.Puffins are one of the few birds that have the ability to hold several small fish in their bills at a time. Their raspy tongues and spiny palates allow them to firm grasp 10 to 12 fish during one foraging trip. They thus can bring more food back to their young compared with other seabirds that tend to swallow and regurgitate meals for their chicks.

Tufted Puffin Portrait

I could spend hours perched on a cliff in front of a bird at the minimum focusing distance of my camera. I love the slight reflection of the cliffs in the eye of this Tufted Puffin.

Q: “Chris, I met you at the Toronto photography show in Dec 2019” (ProFusion where I was presenting for Sony) “where you were showing your Sony work. We spoke and then exchanged some emails later - I was inquiring if you ever used auto iso etc. 
Looking again at your portfolio, I had some questions on your technique to achieve the amazingly clean backgrounds that you do. I bought a Sony RX10m4 .. enjoying that ……… Also wondered if you are doing any virtual seminars. Thanks” - Ken Wagner

A: Hi Ken!

The trick to the out-of-focus backgrounds is to find a subject and angle that offers a distant, but pleasing background. Even with a slow lens with a maximum aperture opening of f/11 will produce pleasing out-of-focus backgrounds if the subject is at the minimum focusing distance and the background is far enough away.

I have a bunch of virtual seminars booked with camera clubs, but none scheduled for an open audience at this time; stay tuned here for an announcement in the future.

Tufted Puffin In Flight with nesting material

Sitting on top of cliffs with my lens pointed down tracking seabirds might be one of my favourite things to do. This is a Tufted Puffin bringing some nesting material back to its rocky crevice nest.

The Tufted Puffin is among the Alaskan seabirds facing the challenges of climate change and dying in large numbers. Be sure to read more here:

Unusual mortality of Tufted puffins (Fratercula cirrhata) in the eastern Bering Sea (May, 2019)

How to photograph birds in flight in low light

Tufted Puffin In Flight #1 (Fratercula cirrhata, Macareux huppé, TUPU) Saint Paul Island, The Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea, Alaska. Image Copyright ©Christopher Dodds. Canon EOS 1DMKIV, 70-300mm f/4-5.6 L IS USM @300mm. ISO 1,600, f/5.6 @ 1/3,200s Manual Mode Full Frame. PURCHASE A PRINT or LICENSE IMAGE FOR PUBLICATION HERE.

Photographing birds in flight in low light is quite challenging; it's not easy. I love photographing seabirds, and that often means shooting small, and often erratically moving targets; fast and unpredictable little fliers from the top of coastal cliffs in bad weather. The biggest problem to overcome is our need to always grab our longest lens and our reluctance to shoot wide open at high ISO (for Canon users, anyway). I recently had a discussion with a photographer who told me he didn't need a camera capable of shooting 10 fps (frames per second); he timed the wingbeats and only took one frame at a time. Well, let's just say that was one photographer who had a couple of good birds in flight images in his portfolio, but Florida Great Blue Herons are tame, huge, fly slowly and do have predictable wingbeats. What I want to share today is how I succeed (more, or less) at shooting bullets that move at 55 MPH with 100-400 wing beats per minute; I'm talking, of course, about photographing Puffins in flight. I was fortunate to photograph all three North American species of Puffins this summer, on both the East, and west coast. In June I hosted my annual Puffins Galore (and so much more) workshop for the Atlantic Puffin, and then I photographed the Horned and Tufted Puffins of Saint Paul Island (more images to come soon).
Tufted Puffin In Flight #2 (Fratercula cirrhata, Macareux huppé, TUPU) Saint Paul Island, The Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea, Alaska. Image Copyright ©Christopher Dodds. Canon EOS 1DMKIV, 70-300mm f/4-5.6 L IS USM @300mm. ISO 1,600, f/5.6 @ 1/3,200s Manual Mode Full Frame. PURCHASE A PRINT or LICENSE IMAGE FOR PUBLICATION HERE.

First of all, get over your phobia of shooting wide open and using a high ISO. You are going to need a shutter speed of at least 1/2,500 of a second, but I prefer 1/3,200 of a second to freeze the fast action; this usually means using an ISO of at least 1,600 and an aperture of at least f/5.6 (always in manual mode). I try to get as close as possible in low light and low contrast conditions; I try to use the shortest lens possible, while trying to fill the frame. Using only the centre auto-focus point only usually helps the autofocus system lock onto your subject, but it's going to take more than relying on your camera to acquire focus. I generally try to pick-up repetitive flight patterns; I try to predict where the bird I am trying to shoot will fly and pre-focus on something near there so the auto-focus system doesn't have to spin the lens much to acquire sharp focus. Once locked-on to my subject, it's all up to me to keep the focus point on the subject and hit the stutter button at 10 fps; the best way to be able to do that is practice; over, and over again.
Tufted Puffin In Flight #3 (Fratercula cirrhata, Macareux huppé, TUPU) Saint Paul Island, The Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea, Alaska. Image Copyright ©Christopher Dodds. Canon EOS 1DMKIV, 70-300mm f/4-5.6 L IS USM @300mm. ISO 1,600, f/5.6 @ 1/3,200s Manual Mode Full Frame. PURCHASE A PRINT or LICENSE IMAGE FOR PUBLICATION HERE.

I decided to post three sequential, full frame images of Tufted Puffins from a recent trip to Saint Paul Island (The Pribilof Islands), Alaska to demonstrate that it is possible to pull off what seems like the impossible. I left my tried, tested and true Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS II USM Telephoto Lens at home, instead opting for my favorite new 70-300mm f/4-5.6 L IS USM and threw it on my Canon EOS 1DMKIV. I set-up my exposure in manual mode and checked the histogram to make sure the blacks from the wet rocks below the cliffs I was standing on weren't blocked-up against the left edge to minimize noise, and carefully made sure I had no over-exposed whites on the right edge to ensure the most detail in the whites. Once sure of my exposure, I watched for the Puffins flight path and pre-focused on a rock where I thought the bird would fill the frame. Now pre-focused on the rock, I saw the bird fly in and followed it until it started to fill the frame, partially depressed the shutter button to activate the auto-focus system and hit the trigger at its maximum capture rate of 10 fps. Truth be told; I waited a fraction of a second too long for this sequence, and ran the risk of clipping the Puffin's wing-tips, but it worked-out fine with three action shots that I liked enough to keep (No, I won't teach you how to reconstruct the wingtips if you clip them, but I will teach you how to capture the image right, in the camera - smile).

Which of the three images here is your favorite & why? Leave a comment and you could win a free copy of the new Mac editing software FirstPass.

Second Annual Photo Geek Christmas Party

Great news! Jobu Designs (makers of my favorite Gimbal Head - the Jobu Jr. 3), Think-Tank Photo, Cotton Carrier, have all jumped on-board and offered tons of prizes to show their suppoort for my Second Annual Photo Geek Christmas Party. I expect other sponsors to make offerings and encourage contributions - email me if you would like to donate and promote your product chris(at)chrisdoddsphoto(dot)com

Join me, Canadian nature photographer Christopher Dodds, on November 30, 2011 at 7:30 PM at the Hudson Village Theatre (28 Wharf Road, Hudson, QC   J0P 1H0) for an hour and a half long slideshow presentation to benefit this great cause which is so close to my heart. The show is designed to be entertaining and informative to all; nature lovers and photographers alike. Stories of adventure, natural history facts and information are all on the menu and this show is designed to offer helpful tips & techniques sure to improve your photography efforts with everything from a camera phone, point & shoot camera or professional SLR camera system. Over one hundred of my images will be projected, many unseen.  Everyone is welcome!
Hurry! Only 148 seats. Tickets are only $15.00 each and are available for advance purchase only - every penny is collected by, and goes to Le Nichoir. Please call or email Le Nichoir (communication@lenichoir.org 450-458-2809) to secure your tickets, or make a donation if you can't make it (be sure to tell them it's on behalf of Chris' Photo Geek Christmas Party) Major credit cards and cheques accepted. Finger food and hors d'oeuvres are included and there will be a cash bar (please drink responsibly).
There will be ample time to mingle, meet my friends and contacts and share some of your images with others, so feel free to bring prints, iPads or laptops with your favourite images to share. I hope to see you there and PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD!

Read more about it HERE