Edin Whitehead - Seabird Scientist - Conservation Photographer

Aotearoa ~ New ZealandContact me at www.edinz.com

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Everyday scenes on Antipodes island.

The Spectacle of the Everyday

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Skycall

A male Antipodean albatross calls to the open sky I love simplicity in wildlife images. I spend time chasing minimal scenes, removing distractions, and refining images down to their most basic, and hopefully most striking form. Life is not minimalist, but images highlighting parts of life can be. Overcast skies that blow to white when overexposed are useful. Repeating textures and the bold…

Skycall

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A short update, back on the mainland again. Still dreaming of albatrosses though...

Show-off

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Growing up

A dose of cute baby albatross.

Light-mantled albatrosses nest on cliffs, tucked on tiny ledges, exposed to the elements. There is a nest just across the cove from us on the island, and we’ve been watching this little one grow up. For weeks an adult sat on the nest, through blistering southerlies, pounding northerlies that stirred the sea up to smash along the shore and throw spray high into the air, and the gentle days of no…

Growing up

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Re-greetings

Re-greetings between Antipodean albatrosses, who have spent a year at sea.

Albatrosses are famously ‘monogamous’, choosing one partner to nest with for most, if not all, of their life. Real life is messy, and this does come with caveats – there’s a bit of ‘extra-pair copulation’ that goes on, and if breeding doesn’t work out well they may choose another partner, if they can. With the large sex-bias towards males in the Antipodean Albatross population, a lot of the males…

Re-greetings

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Homeland

Where would you nest, if you were an albatross?

If you were an albatross, where would you nest? On the long plains behind a sheltering lump of fern, halfway up a steep tussocky slope, or on a ridgeline, with a view to the sea, the perfect launch spot for your chicks to learn to feel the wind? They all have their merits. Antipodean albatrosses are very site-faithful, and once they have chosen a place to nest (often not far from where they…

Homeland

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Northern Giant Petrels

Hanging out with other charismatic seabirds.

Northern Giant Petrels don’t get a lot of love. Their various nicknames include ‘stinkpot’, which is, if occasionally accurate, a little rude. Having been the recipient of the self-defence projectile vomit of their chicks, I can confirm that the stink is real. When not vomiting, though, they actually have the quite pleasant warm musky bird smell that many petrels share. They’re quite fastidious…

Northern Giant Petrels

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Stormlight

Some subantarctic minimalism.

We can never make the same image twice. The endless permutations of weather and light, of where birds fly, how the clouds darken and draw light across the landscape, all of these factors spin out into different, unique combinations. Things might look similar, but never the same. Every westerly wind we get brings somewhat predictable conditions that differ in their intensity. We had a lot of odd…

Stormlight

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Yawn

Erect-crested penguin It turns out that sympathetic yawning is a cross-species phenomenon. I’ve noticed it with dogs, and now also penguins and albatrosses. They yawn, I yawn. It doesn’t seem to work the other way around, but I guess I do lack a beak to make it obvious to them that I’m yawning.

Yawn

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First Light, Last Light

Evening impressions from Antipodes Island.

The first week on Antipodes Island, in mid-December. The wind is light, the sky is calm and clear. In the evenings, late, the sun swells to a rich golden glow before disappearing behind the hump of the ridge towards Perpendicular Head, leaving the northeast corner of the island in deep shade. It shines longer on Bollons Island, across the often troubled water between the islands which is so…

First Light, Last Light

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Antipodean Summer Take Two

This summer season sees me back on Antipodes Island, back with the glorious albatrosses who call this place home. It’s a thrill and an absolute privilege to spend a few months here, working through the end of the season that began when I was here in January last year. Nests with eggs are now large, fledge-ready chicks with their last tufts of down slowly being whisked away by the wind. Next…

Antipodean Summer Take Two

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Textures of the Antipodes

Some extra-close-up textures from Antipodes island.

Gentians, ferns, Acaena (biddy-bids), Lycopodiums and more! I love photographing wildlife, but something that draws me just as much is the textures of the environment I’m in. All the tiny details. What fascinates me is the scale at which patterns are made in ecosystems – from tiny regular fern fronds and feather textures to the seemingly organised spacing of tussocks across a hillside. This post…

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The Light Fantastic

Enjoying a rare sunset with Grey petrels on Antipodes island.

The end of a long day of census blocks, walking in lines over lumpy, orifice-infested vegetation. Wind riffling up the slopes of the southern end of Antipodes island, tossing golden tussocks with a chill sou-wester. Add to that a few thousand Kuia / Grey petrels returning from the sea, and low golden light in a rare patch of clarity, and you have something that is still fizzing in my blood…

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Ten ways to photograph an Albatross

Albatross, ten ways. There are more! How do we keep things fresh and creative when we're photographing the same subjects day after day?

Classic portrait Are we surprised that I took lots of albatross photographs during three months living and working on Antipodes island? Not really. But how do you keep things fresh and interesting from a photographic point of view? There are only so many ways to make images of big glorious birds causing around the landscape. Birdscape My most-used lens for the trip was the Nikon 28-200mm.…

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The Southern End

The end of the Antipodes trip - because I did a terrible job of blogging while there, we get to relive the experience as I get to processing photos!

I didn’t manage to do a great job of blogging while on the Antipodes. I hoped to, but too many competing interests were bubbling around at the time, and my main drive was to be outside and photograph as much as possible in the time I had there. Which I think is fair enough! Now I’m back and coming out the end of the field season, a little exhausted, and ready to delve into the big library of…

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Antipodean Summer 1

I’m writing this sitting outside the hut on Antipodes Island, 870km southeast of New Zealand. The fact that I can write and post blogs from here is a bit startling, and it shows how much the world has changed since my last forays into the subantarctic. I am here for three months, December to March, to assist with Antipodean Albatross research. Working in the subantarctic has been a dream for me…

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Two penguins and a PhD

The blog's been quiet for a while, but here's an update from me! More about my penguins, if the short caption isn't enough for you.

Kia ora! It’s been a while. Here’s an update from me: I handed in my doctorate at the end of May, defended in August, and now I am done. PhD, sorted. Graduation is only next autumn, but I have plenty of things to keep me busy until then! I’ll write a longer update on the PhD itself at some stage, for those of you who are interested in the science side of my birdy life. I have a finalist image…

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