All photos © Robin and Arlene Karpan
The SATW (Society of American Travel Writers) recently held its annual Bill Muster Photography Awards. The competition is named for renowned photographer Bill Muster, who established a foundation to support excellence in travel photography. Robin was thrilled to win a Gold Award and a Bronze Award.
Best Animal Photo Category
The Gold win was for an image of a flying Atlantic puffin at Île aux Perroquets, Mingan Archipelago National Park in Quebec. We were staying on the tiny island where the old lighthouse now serves as the Auberge de L’île aux Perroquets for a small number of guests. The island is home to a large seabird colony, its most notable residents being Atlantic puffins.
We can get amazingly close to the puffins, and a big advantage of staying overnight is that we can photograph them in nice evening light. We can stand on the rocky beach close to where they nest on the cliffs just above. The puffins were constantly flying back and forth from the cliffs to feed just offshore, often swooping right over our heads.
I concentrated on getting head-on shots just as the birds rose from the cliffs and seemed to be aiming straight for us. While they were not far away, I used 600mm to get frame-filling images of individual birds. A fast shutter speed was needed to stop the action. To get a relatively fast speed of 1/1600 second, I opened the aperture to f/6.3 (the widest possible on this lens) and used an ISO setting of 1000.
See this posting for more on our experiences staying on this island.
Best Natural Scenic Category
The Bronze win was for a laurel tree in the Fanal Forest on the island of Madeira. Part of the Laurisilva of Madeira UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Fanal Forest holds the largest and best-preserved laurel forest in the world. The old, gnarly, twisted trees are photogenic anytime, but when fog rolls in, it is transformed into a mystical, enchanted forest.
This tree is known as the Witch, which seems to be reaching out her hand in greeting. Fog helps to simplify the scene, isolating individual trees from distracting backgrounds. Photographing it was fairly straightforward. Even with the thick fog, there was plenty of light, so I could use a fairly low ISO of 160. I used an aperture of f/9, which provided enough depth of field to keep all parts of the tree in focus. This resulted in a shutter speed of 1/250 second, which was still plenty fast to take the shot handheld.
For more details, see our posting on Photographing the Enchanted Fanal Forest in Madeira.