What I learnt from my first trip to Skomer
Since getting the wildlife photography bug last year, I have wanted to photograph puffins and Skomer is my closest option. As tickets book up fast, I ordered mine at the beginning of March, for a visit on the 13th May. I didn’t want to spend the night close by, just in case the day was cancelled due to bad weather, and while it would be a long day, driving the 3hr 45 minutes there and back in a day (plus 5 hours on the island) a plan was in place.
I wasn’t going to be visiting the puffins on my own, as I had invited my local photography friend David (check out his Instagram here) to come along with me. We had purposefully chosen the midday ferry, as we were heading down on the day, and we needed to be checked in by 11 am, so, to make sure we had enough time for traffic and any pitstops, our adventure started at 06:30am when I picked David up en route to Skomer.
We arrived with plenty of time on our hands, so after deciding how much of our gear we needed to take with us (the answer was way too much), we checked in, picked up our tickets and explored the deer park, with its views out to Skomer.
View towards Skomer Island from the Deer Park
We hopped onto our ferry and had a smooth crossing, before making our way up the steep steps from the landing area to the top of the cliffs, where we had our orientation chat from the guides working on the island.
Prior to this visit, I had chosen not to binge-watch any videos or doom scroll on Instagram, as I wanted to experience the island for myself (I had already made this decision, but it was reinforced when watching this video on YouTube). The only video I had seen, was one from Alex Handover, when he had visited early in April, and one of the images his partner took was with a wide angle lens, which I really liked and was looking to get one for myself. With all the bluebells that were out, I was also hoping that I would be able to get a photo of a puffin amongst them with my trusty 70-200 f2.8, as I remember seeing images like these from the year before.
The island was a wash with the beautiful colours of the spring flowers, you can see the beautiful purples of the bluebells right off into the distance.
Once on the island, we decided to stop for lunch – we had both got stomach cramps from something, despite eating different foods, and hoped that a little more food might help …. Luckily, we both seemed better afterwards and then were able to make our way across the island to one of the puffin strong holds indicated on the map in our guidebook.
After leaving the Old Farm, we crossed the middle of the island, in the hopes of seeing one of the rumoured (told to us by a seasoned Skomer visitor on the boat over), 9 pairs of resident short eared owls out hunting, but alas, apart from some rather large rabbits, we didn’t see much on our walk.
I found that the green were very overpowering in a lot of my images, due to the harsh light, so have muted them in my editing, which I think helps to make the puffin more prominent.
Once across the island, we headed to the wick and saw our first real puffin photo opportunity. Armed with my 200-600mm lens, I started taking my images. I found that this was actually harder than I thought it would be, the day was incredibly hot and sunny, and despite telling myself earlier to take it slow and don’t just snap away, on reflection, I could have paid more attention to where the sun was and how it was lighting my subjects. There was also a lot of heat haze and I found that my lens was struggling to get pin sharp focus on the puffins.
I have affectionally named this image ‘potato puffin’, as its posture reminds me of Mr Potato Head … 😂
That being said, I did get some lovely images here. After getting some portraits, I wanted to try my hand at some flying shots, and again, this was much harder that I thought it was going to be. The puffins are really quite small, and fly in at high speeds, before coming to a stop and quite literally fall out the sky. While I did my best to keep them in the frame, my camera was also having some difficulties focusing, and I missed a fair few shots due to them being completely out of focus. I did manage to get one flying image … just … the puffin was in the very right-hand third of the frame, so I have done a vertical crop, cutting out all the empty space behind it.
I then decided to move onto my trusty 70-200 lens, as this one does a much better job at focusing, and straight away I could see the difference in my in-focus rate, as well as my confidence building back up.
Due to the puffins, and many other resident coastal birds, burrowing to make their nests, you have to keep to the marked paths, so as not to disturb or destroy the fragile ground. This means that the paths on the island are really rather narrow, and even though everyone was stopping and watching the puffins or taking their photos, both David and I felt a bit rushed and like we needed to move along, and to stop taking up room on the path.
The main puffin colony was located at The Wick, though we found that the area at the top of the wick was quite quiet on our visit.
We continued towards the main point of the wick, where we were told the puffins would be flying towards us, however when we got there, the path was literally single file and there was much action on the puffin front.
We continued our walk around the island, stopping at the South Plateau, to rest and recharge, before heading on towards the South Haven colonies.
It was a scorcher of a day on our trip to Skomer, so we had a much-needed break when we reached the South Plateau, and then an obligatory camera selfie.
We were both a bit disappointed here, as even though there were colonies marked on the map, this side of the island was incredibly quiet, I did manage to get an image of one of the puffins taking off which was great, however, like I said it was really quiet and with our time running out, we decided to head towards the boat landing, in the hopes of photographing the puffins, razorbills and guillemots that were on the cliffs when we arrived.
I think that this is where it really became apparent, that my philosophy of wanting to experience the island first hand was not the greatest idea. If I had done my research, then I would have known that the wick really was the best place to be for the puffins, and we should have stayed there for longer, the age-old saying of ‘hindsight’s a bitch’ comes to mind.
We got to the steps and were told that we wouldn’t be able to head down onto the steps until the 16:30 boat had left, as it was now 16:15 we headed to a bench and waited it out there, as we wouldn’t be able to make it back to any of the other puffin locations in time to be back for our own boat at 17:00.
Once we were allowed onto the stairs, we were able to get our first images of the razorbills and guillemots. Though there were other seabird colonies marked on our map, this seemed to be the only location where we could actually see and photograph them.
It was also here that I captured my favourite images of a puffin from the day. As it was almost 17:00, the cliff here was now in shade, giving me some lovely even, soft light and the puffin here was most obliging with their posing.
Our time on Skomer, was over all too quickly as we headed back on the ferry to the mainland, and home.
On the ferry back to the mainland, after a very hot day in the sun photographing puffins for the first time.
While I had a lovely time on the island with the puffins, I can’t help but feel that I hampered myself a bit and have learnt some lessons that I can use going forward when I plan to visit again next year.
Lessons learned
Eat lunch before/after your trip.
While 5 hours seems a long time, there is a lot of walking involved and the island is actually much bigger than I thought, meaning it takes much longer to get anywhere than I thought. By having lunch before our crossing, we would have had more time photographing.Instagram vs reality.
While I did my best to stay away from the socials on this, I do remember a lot of images from last year, as well as the information I had heard from other visitors, and that was that there would be puffins literally everywhere, and while there were a lot of them, there were significantly less than what I had imagined.
Now this could have been down to the time of year that we went, as it was early in May, the chicks had not hatched yet and so there was no mad rush of parents feeding their young. At the end of May and throughout June, the peak puffin season would be in full swing, and you’d be able to get those famous images of the puffins with a beak full of sand eels.Do your research!
I think that this was my main downfall, by wanting to experience the island first hand, I didn’t realise that the wick was pretty much the sole location for the puffins on our visit. Had I had known that we would have spent much more time here, rather than breeze through thinking there would be more puffins further on.Hold your ground.
Don’t feel you need to move along or rush through areas, yes, the paths are narrow, so be aware of how much room you are taking up, but you don’t need to move along until you are ready.
All things considered, I really did have a lovely time on the island, watching and photographing the puffins, and I feel I was unduly hard on myself. While I only took a total of 295 images and video clips, I have got some lovely images of the puffins that I am really happy with, and I have learnt a lot of lessons that I can put into motion when I get to visit again.