365 Day 159 - Gannets galore

365 Day 159 - Gannets galore

What a brilliant day and one I will remember for a long time.

We were collected from the harbour in Dunbar at 12:30 and made our way out to the Bass Rock in a traditional fishing boat called Fisher Lassie, a journey which took about 50 minutes. There were 10 of us in the group plus Maggie, the gannet expert from the Scottish Seabird Centre in North Berwick, John, our leader and Gordon, the skipper. John had given us a briefing on the optimum camera settings before we started so my 70 a 300 lens was swapped for the 24 - 120, ISO set at 200 and aperture at f5.6 which gave me a shutter speed of about 1/2500 sec, for the first stage of the session which was (trying to) photograph birds diving after fish which were being thrown overboard as we reached the island. Then it was onto the Bass Rock itself where there are estimated to be around 60,000 breading pairs of gannets, not to mention those that have not yet reached the breading stage, what an amazing sight. We had to be very careful where we stepped as several had literally made their nest and were sitting on the path and we also had to move through them quite quickly as they are very vicious as I found to my cost as I gingerly tried to pick my way between them!

We spent about 3 1/2 hours on the rock during which time I took about 600 photographs. Many of the 'in flight' ones will be ditched but even if I only have 2 or 3 that I'm happy with it will have been worth every minute.

I can highly recommend 'Photogrsphers on Safari' which I found in Outdoor Photogrpshy Magazine.








Sorry, couldn't resist an extra couple today