Conwy

A little bit away from my normal stamping goround, just South of Betws-y-Coed is this fantastic little gem well hidden away, Fairy Glen.

I've shot the one in Scotland a few times and they share similarities, while this one is easier to get down to I found it a lot harder to shoot, it had been raining and all the rocks (that I was precariously perched on) were extremely slippery, there was one composition I fancied but I thought it was just too dangerous to try it on a day like today (Pete in being sensible shocker!) but seriously, being on my own there would be nobody to pull me out of the river, or my gear for that matter.

I lierally took 2 shots here that I was very happy with, the lush colours that run up the mossy steep walls are great, as it the deep browns/reds of the deep water, a truly beautiful place. A polariser is an absolute must here as some of the reflections can really ruin an image, think I used a 3 stop as well for the water.

Definitely be coming back again at different times of the day and year. to this spot. Maybe I'll try the more precarious perch next time....

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First visit to the Fairy.......need to return....

Just made it to this speck in the nick of time!

Here's another from the Ogwen Valley in North Wales, but from last year. Those who have climbed Tryfan by the North Ridge or the Heather Terrace are bound to recognise this ladder stile at the base of the Milestone Buttress. It affords a grand view down the valley to Y Garn and Foel Goch, but it also leads to the rock climbers playground of the buttress itself.

Snowdon in the distance.

What the title says really............

Overcast and windy according to the forecast......

bottle neck at Capel Curig......

The first golden rays of morning sunlight hitting the south ridge of Tryfan, with Pen yr Ole Wen behind. It was a beautiful cold and clear morning, the start of what proved to be an exception day in the mountains. This was taken near the beginning of the climb up to Glyder Fach. Tryfan is a spectacular shark's fin of a mountain, rearing up over the Ogwen valley. A completely different character to the rest of the mountains in this area it lacks bulk and instead it is all ridges and buttresses with so many climbing and scrambling opportunities. It is an absolute gem! Don't be fooled by the gentle sweep of the beautifully built dry stone wall, at the other end of the mountain there is a wall right at the bottom but after a few yards it runs into the climbers playground that is the Milestone Buttress. If they tried to build a wall up that it would very quickly turn into a dry stone pillar....

Balanced. This image is unusual for me in two ways; firstly I don't often stray into B&W and secondly I don't often photograph people. A young couple had been climbing ahead of me up the Bristly Ridge, and we got talking along the way after I had given them a few pointers along the way. The young lady confessed this was her first time on the route but she was clearly a good climber. Having topped out, we walked across the lunar landscape of Glyder Fach, and she could not resist clambering across the gigantic boulders and up onto the famous Cantilever Stone. She did look slightly nervous when she got up there, as it is quite high and exposed. I could not believe my luck when I found she was standing in a streak of light created by a break in the cloud. The 'lightening effect' looked pretty good in the original colour version, but even better in this B&W conversion. Hope you like it. Thanks to every one who visited, and especially those who faved and commented. Best wishes.

Beautiful Snowdonia!

One of those moments when the clouds suddenly part to reveal the illusive peak.

Nice sunny day for a change!

Boat house.

I've just got back from a very wet week in the North West of Scotland, where there were no signs of skies like this. I haven't downloaded the images yet, so hope this will do for now. This was another from a fine day out with Brad, Barb and Mark in the Ogwen Valley of North Wales, One location we were keen to try was along the Afon Lloer, looking back across the Ogwen Valley towards Tryfan and the Glyders.

Raynes Jetty, Llanddulas. Bonus point for naming the band who provided the title, double bonus point for naming the year the band I was in supported them at Plant X in Liverpool..........

Bathing pool Llandudno Promenade

Here's another from my return to the mountains. This is the view from part way up Bristly Ridge looking back towards Tryfan, with the Carneddau beyond. From this angle Tryfan looks very much like a young child's picture of a mountain - triangular, steep sided and pointy. It is a truly unique mountain, and one that has given me so many memorable days out over the years.

I fear this as close as I will get to the mountains this winter, with Wales going into full lockdown again today. This is the Castell y Gwynt (or Castle of the Winds in English) is one of the most iconic places in Snowdonia. As you see it is a spikey outcrop on the edge of Glyder Fach, perched at the top of the cliffs on the northern side.

Following on from a few images back on my stream of the rainbow at Llanddulas beach, North Wales.

This was the scene I was originally shooting before that all kicked off out of nowhere, the amount of groynes along this beach has to be seen to be believed so picking one to use in a composition was like trying to find the right needle, in a big pile of needles... I settled on this one as I liked it's wonky appearance, the light was really good for only a very short amount of time, perhaps ten minutes at most, with the tide receding and the rocks on the shore being slowly revealed, the wellies were on and I was in as far as it was safe to be as there was still the odd bigger wave that came thundering in, in fact I lost a few shots to camera shake due to this.

The sun is just peaking over the horizon to my right warming up the groyne on the beach and catching the clouds above, it was starting to rain now to, if you look on the horizon to the left you can see the beginnings of what turned out to be a full blown double rainbow stretching right onto the beach within 5 minutes.

As is often the case there's a price to pay for getting images, whatever that may be, I got absolutely soaked on the beach this morning, and then while rushing about dropped my Lee 6 stop filter in the holder and smashed the corner off it, that's now stylishly masked off with gaffer tape, the way I look at it you can always replace gear, but you can't replicate a scene.

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A very early morning shoot at Llandudno and it's splendid Victorian Pier, after spending a few hours asleep in the car (Top tip - don't ever try sleeping in an Abarth 595) following shooting Comet Neowise on Angelsey the previous evening.

The mornings sunrise here wasn't bad at all but the light was never going to last very long due to the massive bank of clouds just above the horiizon, I decided to do a long exposure here as although the clouds were moving very slowly, there in theory should be plenty of cloud movement across the scene with a heavily filtered setup vastly reducing the light, giving me a nice long exposure time, which was the case.

I though about removing the wind turbine in the distance from the image but have left them in as I think they contrast well in the very brightest part of the image, and to be honest I don't really mind them.

The Pier gets extremely busy during the day with 100's of people on it at any one time, so it was great to see it so peaceful and eerily deserted.

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This is The south-east side of Tryfan, taken appromimately an hour after sunrise on a lovely hot day in Snowdonia.

The traffic up to Snowdonia the previous day was a nightmare. One stretch of the M5, south of Birmingham took around one and three quarters of an hour to progress around four miles. In total, the journey from Taunton to Snowdon took seven hours, without any stops!

I was over two hours later than my intended arrival time and Alex and Roger went on ahead to set up camp, as I didnt want them to miss the sunset, due to my late arrival. Some mis-heard directions over a bad phone line, whislt driving through the mountains led me to approach Tryfan from the west rather than the east and I ended up wandering around trying to find the planned camping spot for nearly two hours.

This day was spent climbing up to Tryfan summit, hopping both ways between the 'Jack and Jill' stones at the top, before returning to pack up camp, hike across the Glyder ridge, taking in Castell y Gwynt and doing an obligatory star jump on the cantelliever stone!

The weather had been hot and fine all day, but as evening approached, the clouds closed in, the wind picked up and we decided to make for lower ground to spent the night.

As this turned out, it was a very fortunate decision, as we awoke at around 1am to an almighty thunder storm raging all around us. The lightning strikes were distant as first, but seemed to sweep right over us, with several strikes being within half a mile or so. The thunder physically shook the ground beneath us and one very close strike, we estimated to be within about 200 metres of out tents made us physically shake too! It was like a bomb going off nearby. A fun and exciting initiation to the Glyder ridges, Snowdonia.

A weekend workshop with Alex Nail resulted in us being camped in a beautiful spot (Llyn Caseg-fraith) to the south east of Tryfan, Snowdonia for a gorgeous sunrise to kick off the day.

This was edited from an in-camera HDR jpg, as I had my camera set to save only the merged bracketed images, but I believe it is still a faithful representation of the scene, with perhaps a lightened foreground from what the eye could see and some enhanced reds in the grasses.

Sunrise, well sort of, just imagine there’s not as many clouds!

Still water on a subsidiary channel to the Idwal outfall stream, provided an opportunity to capture some nice reflections.

An early morning moment of calm at Ardtoe Jetty, looking out across Kentra Bay. A truly beautiful and peaceful place on the north coast of Arndamurchan, hope to get back there one day.

Moody skies over the Ogwen Valley.

There are just so many waterfalls to choose from on the Afon Lloer, looking towards Tryfan and Glyder Fawr.

Snowdonia

The view from the Gribin ridge looking down the deep glacial valley of Nant Ffrancon, with the mountains of Y Garn on the left, and Pen yr Ole Wen on the right. You can see the Isle of Anglesey in the distance. In the foreground far below is Llyn Idwal, nestling in the heart of Cwm Idwal.

Another image from a fab and thoroughly enjoyable sunrise at Llanddulas, North Wales.

The sun had yet to rise above the hills here what you can see is it hitting the clouds above just before it appeared and covered the beach in an absolutely glorious light show during a rain storm, I'm always really careful when I stand in the sea as you never see 'that' wave coming, that tide was on it's way out this morning but it was still pretty lively !

I liked the contrast in this scene with the whites of the wave foam hitting the shoreline against the golden sky, for about a 30 minute shoot in the light it was very productive, when I left it was like a different day! dull, drab, flat, and totally not worth getting the camera out for. Another morning well spent.

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I've not uploaded anything for a while as I've been really busy so apologies for missing commenting on your shots as I just haven't had the time to come on much....

Had several trips recently which I've found myself with a rather large backlog of images to edit, not that I'm complaining! A few days in Wales saw some really good results as well as catching up with some photography friends, namely Brad Eide and Mike (Muddyboots).

It had been a good while since I shot this location so I decided to have a night in Llandudno before heading into Snowdonia and try to get some different images as well as scouting out a few new locations, this one was shot in the evening not long before a sunset that really didn't materialise.. The old Victorian structure for me is one of the best piers in the UK with the great dome design at the end.

The dropping light allowed for a 6 minute exposure, effectively isolating the pier in the scene.

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River Conwy, well part of it........

Last Sunday marked my return to the mountains for the first time this year, the Welsh border having been closed due to Covid. As it had been so long I just could not bring myself to wander up some grassy lump, I needed to get my hands on some rock! So I choose what has to be one of the best scrambling routes in Wales - up the north ridge of Tryfan, down it's south ridge, then up the Bristly Ridge to Glyder Fach, and then back down the Gribin ridge. The first part of the route more or less follows the skyline of the magnificence that is Tryfan which is centre stage in this picture. Being a bank holiday weekend I had to be there early to beat the crowds, but it did mean I got caught by a rogue snow shower near the top of Tryfan. Dear reader - it was a brilliant day, and I hope this shot, taken from the lower part of the Gribin, conveys at least some of why I love the mountains so much. Best viewed large.

Here's another of one of my favourite places in Snowdonia - the Castell y Gwynt (or Castle of the Winds in English). As you see it is a spikey outcrop on the edge of Glyder Fach, perched at the top of the cliffs on the northern side. It does get in the way if you are walking beween Glyder Fach and Glyder Fawr (seen in the distance here), but it is good sport scrambling right over the top. It is bigger and steeper than it looks.

Explore #4 30/06/17

Just after dawn at Llandudno Pier, this has been on my list to do for seemingly forever but it never seems to fall right for me either with weather or tide times, or a combination of both on a day when I'm free.

As it happens this day I had been shooting the sunrise at Talacre (see last but one image) and instead of heading inland as planned I decided to visit here totally ad hoc as the tidal conditions looked promising although it was raining on and off.

Upon arrival the rain had stopped and the tide was heading out but still plenty of time to get down onto the beach, get set up low and get the sea surrounding the barnacle covered rocks with the cloud cover preventing any harsh light, giving this very tranquil looking scene with the old Victorian Pier stretching out through it. I managed 2 shots I really liked here this morning so well worth the diversion, there is a myriad of compositions to be had here I'll definitely be coming back here again.

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