Nova Scotia & Puffins - July 18-24, 2025 - 2 spots left!!
Tuition - $2600 - Puffin boat tour for 2 days is included in the tuition price. ($500 deposit due at registration. Tuition does not include meals, rental car, lodging, airfare or gratuity.) See gallery below.
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 on the US/Canada border is an island where thousands of colorful and adorable puffins congregate for 3 months of the year to breed and raise their chicks. Puffins breed on many coastal islands, but there is only ONE that the photographer can actually land on and photograph these beauties up close and personal.....and we will be visiting that island - weather and seas permitting.
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.
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NOTE: Please do not make any non-refundable bookings now. Once the boat tickets have been confirmed in early September we will notify you to make your lodging, flight and rental car reservations.
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The workshop will start in on Grand Manan Island, NB on July 19th, 2025 with the puffin tour. You should fly in and plan to stay at the first hotel on Grand Manan island on the 18th. You will need to book a ferry for you and your vehicle for that day, the 18th, to get you to the island for that night. We will drive to Halifax on the morning of the 21st. You will need a return ferry reservation on the 21st for the 7:30AM time slot. And then we end the trip in Lunenburg on the morning of the 25th.
(Note: This is a workshop that includes puffin photography as well as landscape photography afterward. Due to the location of the workshop and the fact that it is July, we will have early mornings and late evenings for our landscape photography.)
**Payment Policy - Please 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. This workshop requires a $500 deposit. The balance of tuition is due in January 2025. There will be no refunds after October 1, 2024. If you cancel before this date you will receive your deposit 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 19th with the first of 2 puffin boat rides. You will need to be on Grand Manan Island on the 18th so we can get started on the 19th very early. You will need to secure your ferry reservation for July 18th, the day BEFORE the workshop starts. The ferry is out of Blacks Harbour, New Brunswick.
1st Hotel - TBD
July 18, 19, 20 - checking out the 21st
(rates show in Canadian dollars)
2nd Hotel - Best Western
July 21, 22 - checking out the 23rd
250 St Margarets Bay Rd
Halifax, NS B3N 1J4, Canada
902-477-5611
(rates show in Canadian dollars)
3rd Hotel - Smugglers Cove
July 23, 24 - checking out the 25th
139 Montague St
Lunenburg, NS B0J 2C0, Canada
902-634-7500
(rates show in Canadian dollars)
Local Airports:
(Note: please do not book air travel yet. We will let you know when the boat tickets have been confirmed and you will book flights then.)
There are a few options for flying for this workshop:
Halifax, NS:
It is a 4 hour drive to catch the ferry in Blacks Harbour and then a 1 hour and 20 minutes back to Halifax at the end of the workshop.
Greater Moncton, NB:
It is a 2 hour and 15 minute drive to Blacks Harbour and then 3.5 hours back to Greater Moncton Airport at the end of the workshop.
Fredericton, NB:
It is a 1.5 hour drive to Blacks Harbour and then a 5 hour drive back to Fredericton Airport at the end of the workshop.
Note: You could always look into a multi-city iteneriary flying into one airport and out of another as long as you can get a one way car rental.
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:
You will need a valid passport for this trip if you do not live Canada.
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 an island landing. That is just the way of nature and weather, although July is the best month for weather and island landings. If the boat company ends up refunding their fee, that portion will be refunded to the participant.
Gear - You will need your usual landscape lenses plus about up to a 400mm length lens. The birds on the island are everywhere and just not that far away....so a moderate zoom lens would be best. I used an Olympus 40-150 with a 1.4 teleconverter (110-420 equivalent) and it was perfect.
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 can 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.
