Midnight w/ Puffins

I'm really excited to share the first of this series with you. It's an amazing story of overcoming obstacles, chasing light and capturing an image that had a tremendous impact on the world.

The Story:

I had orginally planned

What makes the shot unique?

Pre-production:

I didn't really do much planning for this shot… it was just for fun.

I had to figure out where to go… I had considered going to the Faroe Islands for this but because of a worker strike we had to cancel our plans to go there. Iceland has puffins throughout it's coastal regions and one of the best spots to go is an island off the northern coast called Grimsey but it's a long hike to get up there (and there's very little to do with a baby in tow once you are there.)

So I decided to go down to Vestmannaeyjar, a place I was familiar with.

Production:

We planned to go to Faroe Islands initially to find the puffins… but the country went on a worker strike and we had to cancel our plans to go there. Instead, we stayed in the Golden Triangle area in a friend's summer cottage.

I had been down to Vestmannaeyjar before and I knew it was a great spot to see puffins… so we drove to the southern coast of Iceland and drove our EV onto the ferry to take us over… the ride is about 30-40 minutes.

Once we landed, we grabbed some coffee and then made our way out to the puffin lookout at the far end.

The depth of field on this shot appears to be extremely shallow but the reality is the background is just SUPER far away. I'm pointing the camera down a hill with a sharp drop-off so the light circles you see in the background are actually the sunlight bouncing off the ocean hundreds of feet below.

This shot was captured around mignight