Favorite Places – Newfoundland

The captain skillfully eased his lobster boat close to the leeward side of a small island about a half a mile out of Witless Bay on the Avalon Peninsula, a jut of land that dangles, like a hanging chad, from the southeast corner of Newfoundland.  Pointing the bow into the current, he steadied the boat as the ebb tide sucked the ocean out from underneath us.  Meanwhile, we adjusted our apertures, shutter speeds, and auto focus settings then aimed our lenses upward at the hundreds of Atlantic puffins adorning a grassy cliff that towered over the starboard gunwale.  Nesting puffins poked their colorful orange beaks out of their burrows in the soft, crumbly soil.  Courting pairs stood on tussocks and ledges alternately throwing their heads backward and flashing the brilliant yellow linings of their mouths at one another – the puffin’s form of spooning.  Overhead, against a clear blue sky, a fury of stubby wings frantically flapping and tangerine-colored webbed feet tucked way back on stocky little bodies extended from the cliff like a phalanx of ants streaming from an anthill as puffins winged out to sea and as many returned some, but certainly not all, with hauls of capelin or krill  or hake or herring clamped in their beaks for their hungry chicks. 

I braced my back against the side of the wheelhouse, handheld my camera and shot wide open at f/4 with a 1.4x on my Canon 300mm f/2.8 IS lens, on aperture priority, evaluative metering, and +1 exposure compensation.   Autofocus was set on AI Servo with CF 17 set to 2 (13 point expanded activation) to enable me to keep the birds in focus.  I was hoping to get a shot of a puffin in flight with a beakfull of fish. 

Bull Caribou with Harem 
Canon EOS3 with Canon 300mm f/2.8 L USM lens 
1/90″ at f/4, Kodak E100G
evaluative metering, aperture priority
Gitzo G1340 with Wimberley head
scan from a 35mm slide on a Nikon Coolscan 4000

Alas, I’ll have to try again on another trip. 

During a lull in the action, the captain adjusted the throttles to maintain the boat’s position while he jumped out of the wheelhouse just long enough to suggest that we pull our heads out of the sky and look down – into the water.   I peered over the side and what I saw ranks among the top natural wonders I have ever been privileged to observe first-hand.  Tens of thousands of fish, each about 6 inches in length, formed a solid layer just beneath the surface of the icy gray water surging past the hull.  It was as if from about 8 inches beneath the surface of the ocean to the abyss, there was no water at all, only fish flesh.

Capelin Washed Up on the Beach
Photo Credit: Sandy Wheeler, 2007 Avalon Tour participant

Myself and a congenial group of intrepid nature photographers had come to Newfoundland during the migration of the Atlantic capelin, an important forage fish that swarms along the coasts of the Atlantic provinces during late June and early July.   The spawning of the capelin, in turn, draws the humpback whales and the puffins and northern gannets, and many other species who synchronize their own migrations and nesting activities with this time of plenty.  One might say the capelin also draw the tourists, birders, naturalists, and nature photographers who know that the Avalon Peninsula in June can be as exciting and photographically as productive as a safari in Kenya or a sojourn on the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica.  Indeed, one participant of my 2007 tour remarked that she captured as many images during the Avalon tour as she did in the same amount of time in Kenya.

 Northern Gannet in Flight
 Canon EOS -1D Mark II N with Canon 300mm f/2.8 L USM lens
1/1000″ at f/8, +1 exposure compensation, ISO 200
Evaluative metering, aperture priority, autofocus at 13 point auto expand
Gitzo G1340 with Wimberley head

The Grand Banks, a group of submerged plateaus just southeast of Newfoundland and the convective mixing of the warm Gulf Stream and cold Labrador current here causes upwelling, or the lifting of deep ocean waters – and the nutrients that would otherwise settle to the bottom – to the surface.   Add sunlight and you get an abundance of plankton – the ocean’s primary food source.   You know that favorite deli or diner where everyone goes, where the parking lot is always packed with cars and there’s a 45 minute wait for a booth or a table?  Well, the Grand Banks are one of the Atlantic’s most popular restaurants.  Additionally, Newfoundland lies smack in the middle of North America’s boreal region – a transition zone between the arctic and temperate biomes, two of the Earth’s major biogeographic areas.  Just as a cattail marsh is an especially diverse habitat because it’s the transition from the land to a pond or lake and is therefore inhabited by both terrestrial and aquatic species, the boreal region is particularly diverse because it offers both arctic and temperate landscapes and species within extremely close proximity to one another.  In the span of a single day and without driving more than 50 miles, I can photograph magnificent bull moose before breakfast, northern gannets in the morning, breeching whales all afternoon, and catch an iceberg or two on my way to photographing caribou on the tundra at dusk leaving the fabulous seascapes and vivid fishing villages and bald eagles and kittiwakes and the tide pools with their sea stars and lion’s mane jellyfish for another day!

Iceberg and Wharf
 Canon EOS -1D Mark II N with Canon 300mm f/2.8 L USM lens and 1.4x teleconverter
1/8″ at f/22 ,+1/2 exposure compensation, ISO 100
Evaluative metering, aperture priority
Gitzo G1340 with Wimberley head & cable release

The Avalon Peninsula is as salty as it gets without SCUBA gear.  Whales so close you have to shield your camera from their spouts!  Beaches and headlands so crowded with gannets and puffins and gulls and kittiwakes that you can’t see the rock or grass or sand between individual birds.  The world’s only beach from which, while seated comforably in your beach chair, you can fill up your viewfinder with a breeching whale!  And a surreal coastline that makes you feel like you’ve travelled to Norway or New Zealand with monolithic sea stacks and icebergs rising out of the ocean – sometimes just off the wharf – like something out of the Lord of the Rings. 

Sea Stacks & Gull
 Canon EOS -1D Mark II N with Canon 300mm f/2.8 L USM lens
1/350″ at f/6.7, +1/2 exposure compensation, ISO 200
Evaluative metering, aperture priority
Gitzo G1340 with Wimberley Head & cable release

And the best part about Newfoundland?  From my back door in northern Vermont, I can be on that beach watching the breeching whales in two days – without getting on an airplane!  What’s more, a good deal of that time I’m not even driving; I’m sprawled on a sofa on a ferry watching out the window for dolphins and whales or reading. 

Humpback Whales Spouting
Canon EOS -1D Mark II N with Canon 300mm f/2.8 L USM lens
1/8000″ at f/3.5, -1/2 exposure compensation, ISO 400
Evaluative metering, aperture priority
handheld

We’re going back to the Avalon this June and there’s still space available.  See http://www.sojournsinnature.com/touravalon.php for details. 

By the way, I’ve just received another shipment of our two coffee table books, Sojourns In Nature – Volume 1 and The Kenya Edition.  You can order signed copies of both volumes simply by visiting our on-line store at http://www.sojournsinnature.com/store.php.  Both books offer technical information on how all the images in the portfolios were produced.

And now, a couple of images by the man who assumes full responsibility for my not having become a corporate lawyer.  Roger Burnard was the person who showed me what a camera was capable of doing well before I knew what an f/stop is.  It was his inspiration that ultimately encouraged me to, as we used to say (and I still do), do our own thing in our own time.   Love you, Roger. 

Pelican with Fish

Gull with Fish

Sojourns In Nature is very proud to announce that we are now sponsored by:

We’ll elaborate on this in our next blog as we are still working on the details, but we are excited to announce that Gary Farber from Hunt’s Photo, Video and Digital has agreed to sponsor Sojourns In Nature.  Gary has generously offered to contribute $125.00 toward the cost of our multimedia presentation, “Sojourns in The Wild – Farther Afield” and all he’s asking in return is an invitation from the club, museum, theatre, campus, or organization hosting the show to attend the presentation and set up his Hunt’s exhibit.  This reduces the cost of the presentation to $225.00!  You get the presentation, a field seminar, and two pros to tap for advice, deals on gear, and otherwise abuse us until you run out of questions or they throw us out of the pub.

 
Peace and may the light be with you,

Gustav

Posted by Gustav under Newfoundland,Participants' Photos | Comments (8)