Shetland and Orkney Photo Gallery Part One
Check out the galleries for Shetland and Orkney: Gallery 1 and Gallery 2!
Last year in July I went to the Shetland Isles, the most northerly part of the United Kingdom, and from there I went to the Orkney Isles, working my way back to mainland Scotland.
But here’s the thing I am terrible at keeping an editing schedule! I take a lot of images but I take forever to get around to editing them. So, in this article I am going to give you a sneak peak at my upcoming gallery featuring images from my journey around the Northern Isles of Scotland.
The first week of my trip, I was booked on to a wildlife photography tour with the great guys at Shetland Nature. After that I wanted to continue to explore Shetland by myself, aiming to get some landscape images and continue what I had learned the previous week.
After a week of exploring Shetland, I took the ferry from Lerwick, Shetland to Kirkwall on Orkney, I had a week to explore the Orkney Isles. During my time there, I mainly stuck to Mainland Orkney with a couple days on the Isle of Hoy.
This first and second parts will focus on my first week in Shetland, talking about my week with Shetland Nature and the great images I got with them.
Week One - Day One
The first week of my trip, I was booked on to a wildlife photography tour with the great guys at Shetland Nature. After taking the overnight ferry from Aberdeen, which was 12 hours and required sleeping in a pod chair, I arrived in Lerwick on Mainland Shetland at 7:00am.
I had already breakfasted on the ferry, rather enjoying the full Scottish that I had booked with my ticket. The rendezvous point was not until the afternoon at the most southerly point of Mainland Shetland: Sumburgh Head, where there was a hotel which we would spend a night or 2.
So I decided to have a walk around Lerwick, leaving my camera gear in the car, as I couldn’t be bothered to go rifling through all of the stuff for my journey to find it.
Pro Tip: put your camera gear on top of your other stuff, so you don’t miss an opportunity! This can be applied to the car or to your backpack!
I wanted to visit the tourist information centre in Lerwick, as I had no idea where anything was or what to look for, but it didn’t open until 9:30. This meant that I had a couple of hours to kill, so I wandered through the town and up on to a cliff looking out to the Isle of Bressay.
A wonderful introduction to the islands, on my walk I encountered local Shetlanders who would say “hello” and start a conversation without any hesitation.
After I got some information, I began a leisurely drive down the main vein of Shetland: the A970 road, which runs from the southerly point of Sumburgh Head to the northerly point of North Roe. I stopped frequently, marvelling at the unique landscape and unfamiliarity of everything.
To get to Sumburgh Head you have to cross the airport of Shetland, which has daily flights to the Scottish Mainland, and therefore connections to the rest of the UK. But soon after driving over the runway I found a beach to stop at and have a walk along.
It was amazing!
White sand with crystal turquoise water, a beach of which the Caribbean would be jealous! It was a bright sunny day, although the wind meant that I kept my fleece on!
Leaving the beach, I continued the short journey to the hotel, which was right next to an amazing archaeological site called the Jarlshof. As I have a membership with English Heritage, I have access to Historic Scotland sites as well, luckily the Jarlshof is managed by Historic Scotland, so I decided to visit.
My word it was fascinating!
In that one spot people had lived from the Bronze Age well into the medieval, it’s possible to see the architectural changes from Bronze Age to Iron Age to Viking settlement to the Medieval Laird’s house that dominates the scene. If you’re ever in Shetland and enjoy history then you cannot skip this!
From the Jarlshof, I walked along the cliffs up to the Sumburgh Lighthouse looking out to the south, knowing that Scotland was a long way from here.
Week One - Day Two
In the evening the day before, I met one of the course leaders, Josh Jaggard and the other participants on the course and we discussed the days ahead.
This day began bright and early with us being picked up from the hotel after breakfast and being driven back up to Lerwick to meet the other course leader, Richard Shucksmith.
This was my first experience on an inter-island ferry, as we left Lerwick to go to Bressay; the island I had been looking at the day before.
The inter-island ferries of Shetland were amazing. Cheap and efficient travel. While we were on the short ferry ride, Richard received an alert of an Orca pod heading south along Mainland, possibly coming close to Bressay. After a quick survey we all decided to try and see them.
So with Richard driving we ventured to the north of Bressay in an attempt to see the pod. After a while looking out to sea, he received another alert and they had headed back north. Thus we continued our journey across Bressay.
Our ultimate destination was the island of Noss, a wildlife oasis, monitored and managed by Scottish Natural Trust as it is a National Nature Reserve. To get there from Bressay we had to ditch the car in a designated area, walk down a cliff to a small landing point with a Zodiac boat taking us across a small channel separating the islands.
Once on the island we began a hike up to the cliff at the opposite end. Unfortunately for me, I had chosen to wear a new pair of walking boots and halfway up I developed blisters the size of golf balls on my heel. Eventually we arrived in the area, and to my amazement we were surrounded by puffins. I could’ve grabbed one if I wanted.
We stopped to chat a bit about the opportunities these puffins present, shots to think about, don’t forget to think about your background, the usual stuff. So, I kicked off my boots and wandered around the soft grasses barefoot, experimenting with the puffins.
We spent the majority of the day with those puffins, the last Zodiac left the island at 17:00, so at about 16:00 we headed back from the cliffs to the dock. I was limping my way back, my feet on fire.
Pro Tip: always carry blister plasters in your pack! I normally do, but with so much gear and disorganisation on my part, I left them in my other camera bag!
Limping along the track, ahead of me I saw people running to the shore. I had no idea what was going on, so I just kept my head down and continued walking. When I finally got to a gap in the fencing, to get closer to the people that had been running, I found out the Orca were there right in front of them.
But I arrived just a little too late! I saw a solitary dorsal fin as they swam around the corner of the island. The island warden started running across the island to continue to watch them and see their path. Meanwhile my group was split into 2 to go across the channel in the Zodiac as it couldn’t fit all of us.
I joined the first group, believing that the Orca sightings had finished. We went across the channel and started climbing up to the car, when we spotted the Orca moving through the very channel we had just sailed across.
I started waving my tripod in the air trying to get the attention of the other in my group that were waiting on the dock, about to cross the path of Orca, but luckily one of them spotted them instead. I was up on the hill and didn’t get any decent images, just record shots of the event. But the guys on the dock has been standing 3 metres from the Orca as they swam past. So close that Josh was able to film them with his phone!
Once they rejoined us at the car, we headed back to Sumburgh for dinner and sleep.
Week One - Day Three
The next day we left the hotel and we were moving our base to the northern island of Unst, so I was following the team’s van in my own car. First stop was Lerwick.
We went out from the harbour on a small vessel for a gannet feeding frenzy at the end of the isle of Noss. The voyage began by leaving the harbour of Lerwick, navigating around Bressay to the southern cliff face of Noss. Along the way Great Skua floated on the wind behind the boat, knowing that soon there would be fish for the grabbing.
We popped into a small sea cave on the island and saw cormorants, fulmar and kittiwake nesting around and in the cave. It was a bit too dark and the images I managed to get were a bit out of focus and soft. Leaving the cave we stopped in the middle of the sea, near to the gannet colonies on the cliffs upon which the day before we were photographing puffins.
Floating on the sea, the skipper started throwing dead fish in to the water. At first it was the skuas that gobbled up every morsel, but soon a torpedo thundered out of the sky and dived in to the water grabbing a fish. The gannets had started to arrive.
Feeding frenzy is an apt name for what happened next as hundreds of birds began circling the sky, diving into the water and fighting amongst each other for each and every fish. The skuas continued to try the luck, often bombarding the recently surfaced gannet, forcing them to drop their prize and allowing the skua to gobble it up. There were so many birds and they are so damn fast that it was really difficult getting images.
A high ISO to get the shutter speed up meant that a lot of the images have a bit of grain, but the experience was more than worth it!
Pro Tip: Get your shutter speed up with a higher ISO and use a wider lens than you really think, the frame is complicated with hundreds of birds and you’re moving with sea, so it’s easier to crop a bit than to try and get a close shot outright.
You really need to have a go at this! One of the most fascinating experiences I’ve had, and you will always remember the sounds, smells and views of gannets shooting out of the sky like arrows. Once we had run out of fish, the gannets started to disperse and move back to their colony. We followed them in the boat.
This was my first experience of a gannetry, thousands of birds sitting along ridges in the cliffs. The cliffs have so much guano from the birds that they are plastered white, the smelliest Jackson Pollock style picture you will ever see. After a quick survey of the gannet colony we continued heading to the northern end of Bressay, the boat making a full circle on its voyage. Along the way we spot some seals, basking on some rocks.
Our next stop is close to Lerwick harbour this isn’t for photography, instead the skipper drops an underwater drone over board and navigates the sea bed, showing the rich sea life of that survives in the waters around Shetland. In the water is a World War II plane, decaying and rusted, but a safe haven for a multitude of species. It has become a part of the underwater landscape, an integral part of the ecosystem, allowing corals, urchins, and anemones to create a new home.
As we continue a seal’s head pops up behind the boat and he begins to follow us. The skipper stops the boat and says, “Hello Steve” to the seal. By way of greeting the seal hops onto the back of the boat and the skipper gets a couple of fish that he had saved from the gannets to feed to Steve. The seal loves this and wants more after we have run out. He hops of the boat and we continue into the harbour, Steve following the whole way. Once we’ve docked Steve once again hops onto the boat hoping for more fish but we don’t have any.
Leaving Steve in the harbour we continued our journey north, I was following the team van and I had no idea about where we were headed. Soon we were at the north end of Mainland and about to hop across on a ferry to Yell, which lies between Mainland and Unst. A quick driver across Yell to another ferry port and a hop across to Unst, our ultimate destination and base for the next few days.
On the way to our new accommodation at the old RAF Saxa Vord base, we stopped at a lake where some skua were washing the salt off of their wings and body. It was a rather calm few minutes sitting on the shore of the lake, watching the skuas, especially after the feeding frenzy. After a while we continued our journey and stopped at another small pond.
We were in search of a Red Necked Phalarope, I had never seen one before so I was unsure of its size. It turned out that they are tiny! Less than 10cm long! Wonderful to see. A very special species which leaves the males to raise the chicks, the female lays the egg and moves on.
That was our last stop and we continued to Saxa Vord where we had 2 houses to share between 6 of us. This would be our base for a few days.
Continued in Shetland and Orkney Photo Gallery Part Two!
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Written by Daniel Long
Daniel Long created DRL Photography as a place to showcase his work as a photographer. Daniel has learnt a lot about photography and wishes to impart this knowledge with you, although the world is an ever changing place and he always says “you can never learn everything.” So as he makes his way, he continues to learn knew techniques, skills and information about photography. He focuses on Landscape and Wildlife photography and Daniel has a special focus on Scotland, his home away from home. As well as writing about photography and taking pictures out in the field, Daniel offers guided photography days so he can share his knowledge and locations in an effort to give his clients the best opportunities possible. Have a browse around this website to see his images, guided experiences and articles about photography. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to get in contact.
