Nova Scotia with Puffins - Mid-July 2024 - dates TBD
Tuition - $2500 - Puffin boat tour for 2 days is included in the tuition price. (Does not include meals, rental car, lodging, ferry, airfare or gratuity.) $500 deposit, balance due Jan 15, 2024 - 8 participants
Nova Scotia is one of the greatest coastal destinations in the world. People from all over travel to see the beauty of the province's rocky coast and the quaint and charming coastal towns and villages. Nova Scotia is a landscape photographer's dream destination.
But, also located in Canada is an island where thousands of colorful and adorable puffins congregate for 3 months of the year to breed and raise their chicks. Puffins exist on many coastal islands, but there is only ONE island that the photographer can actually land on and photograph these beauties up close and personal.....and we will be visiting that island!
This workshop takes you through some of the natural coast's most ruggedly beautiful landscapes. Photos you will return home with will depict lighthouses perched on top of gorgeous rugged coast lines, colorful boats tied to their docks, foggy mornings on the bays and hopefully more puffin pictures than you know what to do with.
**Cancellation Policy - Understand that on our longer trips where most people have to make extensive travel plans in order to join us, our cancellation policy is slightly more strict. On this workshop, the last day for you to cancel for a refund is December 1, 2023. If you cancel before this date you will receive your payment back. After this date, there will be no refunds unless we can fill your position with someone from the wait list.
For this reason, we highly recommend travel insurance with a trip interruption feature included.
Lodging
This workshop starts on July __________ ON Grand Manan Island. You need to be ON the island the night before as we will likely head out to the puffin island very early the first day. So you need to book ferry passage out of Blacks Harbour in New Brunswick on the ________, spending the night of the _______ on Grand Manan. Click HERE for the ferry schedule.
1st Hotel - Grand Manan - Hotel and Dates TBD
2nd Hotel - Best Western - 250 St Margarets Bay Rd, Halifax, NS B3N 1J4, Canada - Dates TBD
3rd Hotel - Smugglers Cove - 139 Montague St, Lunenburg, NS B0J 2C0, Canada
Local Airports:
The workshop will start on Grand Manan Island in New Brunswick, catching the ferry from Blacks Harbour to get onto the island. You will need to drive to Blacks Harbour first, then to Halifax in Nova Scotia to start the landscape portion of the workshop. We will end up in Lunenburg, NS. This is where you will depart from to go back to your choice of airport. You should fly in at least one day early as it is unlikely you will be able to catch the last ferry of the day to the island on the same day you fly.
There are a few options for flying for this workshop:
(Flying in to New Brunswick)
Greater Moncton Romeo LeBlanc International Airport (YQM)
777 Aviation Ave #12
Dieppe, NB E1A 7Z5, Canada
(5 1/2 hours total drive time to first destination and from last destination back to airport)
Fredericton International Airport (YFC)
2570 Route 102 Highway
Lincoln, NB E3B 9G1, Canada
(6 1/2 hours total drive time to first destination and from last destination back to airport)
(Flying into Nova Scotia)
Halifax Stanfield International Airport (YHZ)
747 Bell Blvd
Goffs, NS B2T 1K2, Canada
(6 hours total drive time to first destination and from last destination back to airport)
OR
(Flying into Maine and driving across the boader)
Bangor International Airport (BGR)
2828 Walker Field Drive #301
Grand Junction, CO 81506
(10 hours total drive time to first destination and from last destination back to airport)
Transportation:
Major car rental companies are available at or near all airports. Participants will need to arrange their own transportation to, from, and during the workshop. Participants may wish to share the cost of a rental car. Some locations on the workshop have very limited space for vehicles and we ask participants to carpool to a few of the shooting locations anyway.
If you would like to possibly share the cost of a rental car with another participant, please let us know and we can try to help arrange it.
For this Workshop:
Accessories - We do not require that you purchase any specific equipment for this workshop. With that said, however, there are a couple of filters that we feel are very important to possess and whose effects cannot be replicated in Photoshop. A circular polarizer is very commonly used in landscape photography, especially around water. And there may be times you would like to smooth out the water with a neutral density filter.
Weather – This workshop could take you through many shooting environments, so be prepared for whatever the weather may bring. Be sure to have rain gear (tops and bottoms) for you and coverings for your camera/camera bag. Bring layers to dress in as weather conditions can change rapidly in this environment. Temps can range from 55-80 degrees at this time of year.
We have two days reserved on the puffin tour boat. Weather perimitting we will go out both days. Sometimes weather can be rough and or rainy. Prepare for both. Sometimes the weather could prevent the boat from going out and/or the seas could prevent and island landing. That is just the way of nature and weather, although July is the best month for weather and island landings. If we don't go out on the boat tours, that portion of the tuition will be refunded to you.
Gear - You will need your usual landscape lenses plus about a 400mm length lens. The birds on the island are everywhere and just not that far away....so a zoom lens would be best. I used an Olympus 40-150 with a 1.4 teleconverter (110-420 equivalent) and it was perfect. However, if we have to take a makeup boat tour later in the workshop due to weather, we will not be as close to the puffins, so longer would be better in that situation.
Conditions - all walking will be rather flat and short distances. You may choose to scramble on top of rocks here and there, but it is not necessary. The boat landing on the puffin island is the only place where it could get tricky. You must get into a skiff with your gear on moving water and then out of the skiff onto the island where it will be slippery and possibly bumpy due to waves. You will have help doing this, but you need to be able to step up and down into and out of the boat on possibly slippery surfaces.
