A tripod was really needed here due to lack of light but unfortunately it was impossible to set up a tripod as I was standing on the edge of the cliff. Thus I had to handheld the 400mm lens at a slow shutterspeed, 1/100. I solved it with the 'poor man's IS' trick, e.g. I shot a series of frames in burst in the hope that one or two would be sharp, which was fortunately the case here.
Processing:
a) Converted from RAW using Camera RAW in Photoshop.
b) Decreased noise, especially in the background.
c) Shadows/highlights to recover some details in the feather (the bird was in a shadow from the cliff).
d) Increased constrast slightly with a curve adjustment layer.
e) Slight soft-light adjustment layer.
f) Cropped from the sides.
g) USM in the end after resizing.
Krýsuvíkurbjarg ocean cliffs near Reykjavik, Iceland are nesting grounds to around 60,000 breeding pairs of birds. Puffins though aren't really that numerous there and often hard to get to so I had to search for a while at the cliff's edge before finding any to photograph. When I could get close enough the puffins though didn't mind the camera much.
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Wow, this actually amazed me as this loaded. That is truly incredible.
I've never seen a shot of a puffin or pretty much any bird to that quality.
The out of focus object to the right in the foreground gives it a candid feel, like a stolen moment.
Straight 10 from me.
Brilliant.
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