Chanonry Point : Who stays put longest, wins!

The light was fading fast - but hey.....

I learned, or had reinforced in my mind, a couple of classic wildlife photography rules when I visited Chanonry Point near Fortrose, near Inverness, last week - 'Be Patient' and 'Do your Homework Beforehand'.

Chanonry Point is a little spit of land jutting out to sea, just north of the little Scottish town of Fortrose, on the Black Isle and is well known as probably the best place in Britain to see dolphins close-up. Bottlenose dolphins in this case.  

Now, there is not really any point in just turning up at Chanonry and expecting to see dolphins, just like that. Doesn't work that way, I'm afraid.  You need to be there after low tide, and anything up to two hours after low tide.  That's when the dolphins know that their salmon lunch will have least room to manoeuvre.

To allow myself to get my bearings, I got there about 6 pm - two hours before the low tide at 8 pm - and the beach already had a good few people there with cameras mounted on tripods, including a group on a photography course led by a 'pro'. They'd been on the beach since 2:30 earlier that afternoon and, up to the point when I asked them hadn't seen a thing.  Not surprising - it wasn't low tide.  Around 7 pm, they packed up and left - presumably without much to show for the time they spent out there, and certainly without the dolphin shots they wanted.  Here's where the 'Do your Homework Beforehand' bit comes into play.  It's no big secret that the period after low tide is dolphin playtime - there are a number of references to this on the internet by Chanonry Point 'regulars'.  I felt quite sorry for the snappers on the photography course. They had presumably paid good money to be there and had to go back to their lodgings empty-handed.  If the 'pro' leading the course had structured the day around Chanonry's low tide point, things would have been different I suppose.

So, there I was at 8:00 - 8:30 - 9:00 and still not a dolphin in sight.  Then, halleluja, someone I was talking to pointed out a pod of dolphins in the distance, heading our way.  By 9:30 they were just feet from us, chasing salmon around the swirling waters.  My patience had paid off.  Those 8 or so bottlenose dolphins gave a superb display - jumping out of the water and splashing around.  A phenomenal dolphin display that was better than anything you'd ever pay for (if you were that way inclined) and a perfect photo opportunity.  The light was fading fast, I'll admit, and my ISO settings were rising to their eventual high of 1600 - but the photos were there and I was well pleased with the results.

The point I am making is that, in wildlife photography, patience and planning really does pay off.  Who won the big prize that evening?  Certainly not the 'pro' and his group of paying clients.  Nope - it was the kids, the pensioners, the dog walkers, the amateur snappers with DSLRs, the happy snappers with compacts, and the folks using their smartphone cameras - not to mention people who were just content to look and enjoy.  Oh, and me of course!