Scotland. A year of bird photography
4 Jun 2024. The end of May marked my first full year of bird photography, but somehow I missed it altogether. Only now, while looking at a few shots I took last week, on a long weekend in and around Edinburgh, did I realise the unexpected coincidence of it all. The day I took my first bird photo with a long lens, and with the intention to photograph a bird so I could call myself a ‘bird photographer’, was 28 May 2023. The first full circle closed on 27 May 2024 when, still in Scotland, I went on a boat trip to the Isle of May, a small island (and nature reserve) off the North Berwick coast, east of Edinburgh, where thousands of seabirds spend the breeding season. This timely coincidence was completely unintentional, but that’s what makes me like it even more. It helps me put into perspective the way my photography has changed, evolved, improved (?) – hopefully all of these things happened for real, not just in my head.
This post is mostly meant as a waiver to myself, a ‘declaration of exception’ to the way I now usually try to look at and photograph birds. For the most part of my first year I was all about close-ups: zooming in on birds’ heads, then, sharpness permitting, zooming further in on birds’ eyes at editing stage, then staring at them because by zooming in you can ‘see’ things of a bird that you can’t otherwise notice, because either they fly fast or they’re far from where you’re standing – or both things at the same time. The first year was a journey of discovery of the wholly unknown, the exploration of a pristine, uncharted territory I’d never trodden before but had always been fascinated by. It was an ‘ecstatic’, intensely emotional phase, one without proper method or logic behind it other than ‘you’ve got to start somewhere, so just start’.
It’s easy to say that with hindsight I’d do some things differently, but in fact, it’s okay I did them as I did. Over the last few months of the first full year I’d slowly, happily grown out of the ‘close-up at all costs’ phase, and I’d started to acknowledge the importance and the beauty of including the bird’s environment in my shots. Close-ups are stunning, but ‘environmental’ shots are stunning too. In fact, I find them especially meaningful, and I’m trying to focus on them more and more during my trips.
But on the Isle of May there were no rules, hence the waiver-like note to myself. I allowed myself to put aside all the guidelines and recommendations I always give myself, and I just clicked and clicked and clicked. There was simply no other way for me to process the events in the moment, because the emotional impact of seeing all the seabirds, right there in front of me, was too much. At 14 I felt that way about my then favourite pop-rockstar. 25 years on, I feel that way about wildlife in general and seabirds in particular. I did try to keep as steady a hand as I could, as steady as my heartbeat would allow. I tried to take photos, but I also tried to look at the birds with my own eyes, stare at them for the longest moments, appreciate that they were real, and they were (are) perfect.
And, yes, I indulged in close-ups where I could, and I know I will indulge in more of them when I edit. I will try to strike a balance between environment and zoom, but I will indulge. Not because I want to be complimented for my shots – there are no great shots in my Isle of May photo library. I will indulge, and I will do it for myself, so I can look a puffin close in the eyes, see the white streaks of a razorbill’s bill up close, appreciate the shape of a fulmar’s nose, and get lost in the icy blue of gannet’s eye. I will indulge as a way to believe that I did really see what I saw.
The Isle of May trip easily counts as one of the best days of my photography life – and my life in general. I had a mental wishlist of seabird species I knew I wanted to see and photograph the most, which, not living by sea (source of daily yearning and projecting), I have no opportunity to spot. I knew the Isle of May hosted most of them. I also knew that, on the way to May, the boat would sail past Bass Rock, home to the world’s largest colony of Northern gannets. I knew all of this well before the trip happened. But you never know what lies between the theoretical knowledge and the actual unfolding of something.
In the 2.5 hours I spent on the island (rough estimation here, time stopped existing while I was there, I’m pretty sure of that) I found myself ticking all the boxes of my mental wishlist, and adding a few extra entries I hadn’t noted down. Two hours felt like a year, and they also felt like a minute. But those two hours validated an assumption I’d always had about myself, which I’d never truly been able to prove, and that’s my absolute and unconditional love for seabirds. Those two hours on the Isle of May flipped a switch like the one Svalbard flipped in 2023, when, after photographing a polar bear, I told myself I had to practise so I’d be better prepared for the next Arctic sighting, and that was the very switch that got me into bird photography in the first place.
It’s hard to believe how much one can learn about oneself, both as a person and a photographer, in a span of two hours. But when it happens to you, you have to believe it, because you feel it in you. Last year Svalbard changed my life and my photography entirely, and there was no going back. This year the Isle of May might have done just the same.
Though published now, this post was written on 4 June, immediately after the Isle of May trip took place.
