It’s been a while since my last post, it was late June 2022 when I posted the story of the day at Headingley watching cricket. I think its fair to say that life has been very busy in July, lots of work work, but also lots of going out and enjoying life. In the middle of all of this I have had another bout of Covid 19, in fact I write this blog post still positive. I know restrictions are not i9n place any more but I haven’t felt at all like going anywhere. Thank fully this bout of Covid was less severe and I have been able to work through it.
It crossed my mind earlier today that I hadn’t really done much photography, or even any editing, and worst of all I hadn’t updated my blog posting. So this is a quick update on some alternative edits I have made to the images I took on my trip in June 2022 to the Ogwen Valley in Wales.
This was actually the first image I took on the day at Llyn Idwal, I liked the idea of the water, the small island and the mountains towering behind and whilst there is a certain degree of lack of separation of the island from the background I do like this simple image. This is my lasting memory of that day having spent quite a few nights researching this area on Youtube and the Devils Kitchen plays a big part in quite a lot of those videos that I watched.
This image shows you the fuller view from the previous one, the first image has been cropped. My intention here was to get foreground, mid ground and background interest all ins one shot. Whilst the rocks in the foreground do work, I feel that the gap then to the small island is too great. You can, of course, see the bed of the Llyn through use of the Circular polariser, but I feel like this isn’t a stronger enough draw on the eye, to fully act as “proper” mid ground interest. I did use the Lee Filters Little Stopper on the front of the camera., and whilst that gave a 5 second shutter speed it hasn’t completely scooted out the water to hide what lies below. Perhaps there is a little too much of a green tinge in this image, and I did play around with the colours whilst editing this image. I do like this image though.
I love a good stone wall. This wall was literally 50 yards from where I took the previous two images, and the wall coming in from the bottom left really does draw the eye into the centre of the image. You do get an alternative perspective of the small island from the previous two images, as well as looking up about what I think is one of the Glyders. Some might feel like there is too much sky in this image, but a moody sky with lots of textured clouds can add to the “bigness” that I felt when I stood looking at the scenes around Llyn Idwal. It really is a great place to be, climbing, hiking, mountain biking you can do them all here. I got a real sense of the vastness of this and the surrounding areas of Snowdonia, and I wanted this to come across in this image.
This was one of the last images I took that day. I’d hiked around the whole of Llyn Idwal and was contemplating what to do next when I found these rocks that make for good foreground interest. I did slow the shutter speed right down on this image, in fact it is 1/2 a second. There is only a polariser on this image, with the shutter speed being achieved through the aperture beings et at f18, and ISO at 100.
It certainly is an intriguing place to visit, and one that I shall definitely be visiting again very soon indeed.