Photographing the Puffins at Elliston, Newfoundland: From St. John’s and Back

Atlantic Puffins were one of the main reasons I wanted to photograph Newfoundland, and Elliston was the location I was most looking forward to visiting.

Elliston, on the Bonavista Peninsula, has one of the closest land-based puffin viewing areas in North America. Thousands of nesting pairs return each year, and under the right circumstances the birds can come remarkably close to visitors. 

But photographers shouldn’t assume all of the puffins will be standing a few feet away. During our visit, the puffins mainly stayed on the large offshore nesting area across from the viewing point, making a telephoto lens important for getting good photographs.

We also decided not to make Elliston a long day trip from St. John’s. Instead, we spent the night on the Bonavista Peninsula, photographed the puffins that evening, caught sunset near Bonavista, and returned to Elliston the next morning.

For photography, I think that was the right strategy.

Can You Visit Elliston From St. John’s in One Day?

You can, but I wouldn’t recommend it if photography is your priority.

Elliston is roughly a 3½-hour drive from St. John’s under normal conditions. A same-day round trip means around seven hours of driving before adding photography stops, meals or time with the puffins.

More importantly, staying overnight gives you two separate sessions—one in the evening and one in the morning—with the puffins in potentially different light, weather and activity.

Where to Stay Near Elliston

Lodging options in Elliston itself are fairly limited, so it makes sense to also look elsewhere on the Bonavista Peninsula.

We stayed at the Seaport Inn in Port Union, which worked well as a base for Elliston and the surrounding peninsula.

Bonavista has a larger selection of hotels, inns, B&Bs and vacation rentals, along with more restaurant options. From Bonavista, expect about a 15- to 20-minute drive to the Elliston Puffin Viewing Site.

Photography Stops Between St. John’s and Elliston

The drive to Elliston also offers several worthwhile photography stops, so we treated the day as a travel-photography outing rather than simply transportation.

Bay Roberts and French’s Cove

French’s Cove is part of the Bay Roberts coastal area and was once a fishing settlement. Today it offers coastal scenery and remnants of the historic settlement along the Shoreline Heritage Walking Trail.

The better photography opportunity for me was down at the beach. We followed a gravel road to a small beach area at approximately 47°36’36.1063″ N, 53°13’19.2739″ W, which gave us a much better view of the cove and surrounding shoreline.

That lower viewpoint opened up stronger compositions using the beach, dark rocks and curve of the coast. The overcast skies and vegetation also worked especially well with my infrared camera.

It wasn’t a location where I would spend several hours, but I would make the short drive down to the beach rather than only photographing from higher along the coast.

The Three Sisters

The Three Sisters are one of the better landscape stops around Bay Roberts. The three rock formations sit just offshore, but the stronger compositions are from down on the beach rather than from above.

There are stairs leading down to the pebble beach near 47°37’10.6″N 53°12’37.8″W. From there, you can work much closer to water level and use the shoreline, foreground rocks and surf to build more depth into the composition.

A wide-angle lens works especially well from the beach, letting you emphasize foreground rocks and shoreline while keeping the sea stacks prominent. Under calmer conditions, this could also be a good location for longer exposures.

SS Kyle at Harbour Grace

The SS Kyle is one of the more unusual photography stops on the drive. After decades of service carrying passengers and freight and later working in the sealing industry, the ship was damaged during a sealing expedition and tied up in Harbour Grace. On February 4, 1967, a storm tore the Kyle from its moorings and pushed it onto the mussel bank at Riverhead, where it has remained ever since. 

A shoreline boardwalk gives you a clear view across the water. You can also walk along the beach for different compositions using rocks, grasses and the shoreline in the foreground.

The aging ship and rugged shoreline make the Kyle an especially good black-and-white subject. I photographed it with my 720nm infrared camera, but infrared certainly isn’t necessary. The weathered ship, dark water and often gray Newfoundland skies also lend themselves well to a conventional black-and-white treatment.

Arriving at the Elliston Puffin Viewing Site

The Elliston Puffin Viewing Site is easy to access compared with many wildlife photography locations.

From the parking area, it’s about a five-minute walk to the viewing area. Admission is free, although there is a donation box to help with care of the site.

The viewing area itself is an exposed coastal headland with uneven ground and steep cliff edges. There aren’t fences along every drop-off, so photographers need to pay attention to where they are standing while concentrating through the viewfinder.

Dogs and drones are prohibited at the site.

At the end of the walk, you are looking across a narrow gap toward the main puffin nesting area.

Elliston is also known as the “Root Cellar Capital of the World,” with more than 130 documented root cellars around the community. A couple are located right near the puffin viewing area, so they’re easy to photograph before or after your puffin session.

Do You Really Need a Long Lens at Elliston?

Before the trip, I watched videos showing puffins wandering extremely close to visitors. That can happen, but it shouldn’t be your photography plan.

During our visits, the birds remained on the large nesting rock across from us. A telephoto lens gave us many more opportunities than a phone or short lens would have.  I was using the Olympus 300mm f/4 PRO with the MC-14 1.4x teleconverter, giving me an 840mm-equivalent focal length, and even that did not feel too long.

A shorter lens or second body can still be useful if a bird comes close, but if puffin photography is your goal, I would bring plenty of reach.

I’ll cover the OM System bodies, lenses, autofocus setup and focal lengths I used in a separate article on photographing the Elliston puffins with OM System gear.

When Should You Photograph the Elliston Puffins?

The best time to photograph puffins at Elliston is generally from June through August, with June and July being the peak breeding months. Puffins can still be present into September, but numbers may begin to decline in late August as birds start leaving the colony. Our visit was in mid-August, and there were still plenty of birds to photograph.

I would concentrate on morning and evening. The light is generally better, and the morning had the additional advantage of fewer visitors.

The colony’s position also means you won’t always have ideal front lighting. We often had side lighting on the birds, while overcast conditions sometimes helped by making the bright white plumage easier to expose.

Puffin Behaviors That Lead to Better Photos

Some of the best opportunities came from watching what the birds were doing rather than concentrating only on portraits. Puffins returning with fish, pairs interacting, takeoffs and landings all produced more interesting photographs.

One behavior was especially useful to recognize: puffins often walked toward the edge of the nesting area before taking off. That gave me a chance to anticipate the action rather than trying to find and track a bird that was already airborne. 

Puffins are extremely fast in flight, so that little bit of warning made a big difference.

After our first Elliston session, we continued toward Bonavista for sunset.

Sunset Near Bonavista

We explored the Cape Bonavista lighthouse area, but the lighthouse itself wasn’t one of my favorite photographic subjects from the trip. The stronger compositions were nearby at Landfall Municipal Park, where the fence lines, rocks and rugged shoreline gave me more interesting foreground options and several ways to frame the coast.

If you are staying overnight on the Bonavista Peninsula, I would also plan to have dinner in Bonavista. It has the best selection of restaurants in the area and is an easy place to combine dinner with a sunset stop at Landfall Municipal Park.

Is Elliston Worth the Drive From St. John’s?

Absolutely.

If you want to photograph Atlantic Puffins, Elliston belongs near the top of a Newfoundland photography itinerary.

But I wouldn’t treat the trip as simply St. John’s to Elliston and back. The drive offers worthwhile photography stops at Bay Roberts, the Three Sisters and the SS Kyle, while an overnight stay gives you evening and morning opportunities with the puffins plus a chance to photograph sunset around Bonavista.

For us, turning it into an overnight photography trip made the experience much better than trying to squeeze Elliston into a single day from St. John’s.

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