wildlife photography Archives

A small Atlantic puffin floating on calm gray-blue ocean water, holding several silver fish crosswise in its colorful beak.

Finding Gems in the Tedious Work

This photo‑tagging project can be tedious, but every so often it hands me a little miracle. That special shot I thought I’d missed.

I’ve been digging through older folders — the ones full of “not bad, but not good enough” pictures I skipped over during my first sort — and I’m finding gems I never appreciated at the time.

Why I Take So Many Photos

When I’m out on a photography excursion, I take tons of pictures. Way more than anyone needs. Birds and animals don’t pose on purpose, and sometimes I’ll see “The Money Shot”… only for the lighting to shift or the subject to wiggle out of frame. It’s hard work, but it’s also exciting. My adrenaline spikes, my heart races, and I’m basically running on pure wildlife‑photographer joy.

The Not‑So‑Fun Part: Sorting

Then I come home, load 200+ images into Lightroom, and the real work begins. I do a quick pass to eliminate the truly blah or out‑of‑focus ones, narrowing it down to the handful worth polishing. This part isn’t fun, but I do get lost in the art of “imaging.”

Why I Keep the “Almost” Photos

The good news? I rarely delete those second‑tier pictures. Time changes my perspective, and sometimes one of those “almost” shots ends up being exactly what I need for a post.

And that’s how I found him — my little puffin with a beakful of fish.

Award Winning Photo from the Internet

The Inspiration Behind the Shot

This photo earned an international award years ago and was one of the inspirations behind my puffin photography trips. If you do a Google search for puffins with fish, the web is full of these photos. On Machias Seal Island, I saw puffins returning with their catch, but the best I managed was a mouthful of shrimp. That was my last puffin trip.

Shrimp, Its what’s for dinner

A Foggy Day, a Rocking Boat, and a Forgotten Puffin

But while reviewing older shots from the Egg Island tour — yes, the foggy day on the rocking boat — I found a picture I’d kept only because it showed how tiny puffins look in the vast open ocean. This time, though, something caught my eye. A tiny detail. A shape.

It wasn’t so much “How did I miss that?” as “How did I see it now?” Sheer luck, maybe. Or just the magic of looking at a photo years later with fresh eyes.

Zoom… Zoom… Zoom

I zoomed in. And zoomed. And zoomed.

There they were. Fish.

My little puffin had a mouthful of fish after all.

Polishing the Shot That Waited for Me

I sharpened, cleaned up the color, and cropped the heck out of it. It will never be a gallery‑sized 16×20, but a small 5×7 will work beautifully. And sure, it would never pass even the first round of a photo contest — I had to zoom in way too far — but I don’t care.

I love my little puffin. I thought this was going to be “the one that got away.” Turns out he was waiting for me all along.

Here we are well into February and the only decision I’ve made about vacation this year is that I need to use my time share and that I want to be able to cross another state off my To Be Visited list.

Sandy tells me she’s staying home this year so I’ll be flying solo. My time share just launched Club Solo, an additional membership which has been developed to provide a range of benefits for those members of THE Club® who vacation alone on a regular basis. Of course there’s an additional annual fee but it might be worth it. Some of the perks of membership are: For reservations for studio or club suite accommodations at a Diamond Resorts International® resort booked 10 months to 6 months prior to arrival, you will receive a 25% discount on the points values quoted. When booking from 6 months prior to arrival, you will receive a 50% discount.

That kind of discount would open up more resorts. Something to think about for a future add on. I think this year I’ll stick to my regular membership.

I plan to make a return trip to New York in September to try to get more photos of hot air balloons. Now that I’ve done it once and can see how it works, I think I can improve my shots.

So the question now is where do I want to go and what time of year to use the rest of my vacation time. I compared my list of Must Visit States to the states with timeshare exchanges and that only narrowed it down a little.

There were 30 states on that list and of those 30 my timeshare has exchanges in 17 of them. If I were to tackle the list alphabetically then the first state on the list with a time share exchange is Colorado.

Colorado has 2 exchanges, one in Steam Boat Springs and the other in Estes Park. My initial reaction is that the Estes Park location is more to my liking but when I did a search about the best time to visit (for wildlife viewing) the recommended months were June for baby animals or September for the Elk Rut. July and August didn’t even make the list!

I’m interested in wildlife photography first and landscape photography second. Often they kind of go hand in hand anyway.

Do any of you live in the area? Has anyone visited? When time of year did you go? Any suggestions? I would plan to rent a car to get around. I look forward to your comments and suggestions.