Inca Tern Photo Workshop

Our Inca Tern Photography Workshop is a full day on the Lima coast dedicated to a single bird — the Inca Tern, the most beautiful and photogenic seabird of the Humboldt Current, and one of the most sought-after subjects in South American wildlife photography. With its slate-grey plumage, blood-red bill and legs and the extravagant white 'moustache' curling back from each cheek, it is a portrait photographer's dream, and the rocky Lima coastline holds them in numbers at point-blank range. This workshop is built to get you frame-filling images of wild Inca Terns in beautiful light, whatever your level.

We work the coast around Chorrillos and the cliffs and islets of Lima's southern shoreline, where Inca Terns loaf, preen, court and fish just metres away. Because the birds here are relaxed and used to people, you can concentrate on the things that make a great bird image — catchlight in the eye, wingtip detail, the drape of that moustache, birds banking against the surf — rather than on getting close. Peruvian Pelicans, boobies, Red-legged and Guanay Cormorants, Blackish Oystercatchers and passing gulls and terns share the same rocks, so there is always something else to point the lens at between Inca Tern sessions.

This is a proper workshop, not just a lift to a good spot. Your guide is a working wildlife photographer who stays with you all day, helping with everything from exposure and shutter-speed choices for birds in flight to composition, background control and reading the light as it shifts through the day. We keep the group small and shoot in several sessions across the morning and afternoon to catch different angles and the softer light at each end of the day, with a midday break to review images, talk through what is working, and cover editing and post-processing on your own files.

It suits everyone from first-time bird photographers to advanced shooters chasing a portfolio image, and runs year-round along a sheltered, easy-to-walk stretch of coast. Bring your own camera and lens — a telephoto in the 300–600 mm range is ideal, but we will help you get the most from whatever you have — and we handle the pickup, private coastal transport, exclusive access to the best positions and lunch at a seaside restaurant. You leave with a card full of images of one of the world's most striking seabirds, and the skills to keep making them.