With its north facing beaches, the North Wales coastal strip between Talacre and Caernarfon is a wonderful place to visit on a summer's evening for a stroll along a promenade while waiting for the sun to set out over the Irish Sea.
And my wife Liz and I take full advantage of the fact that we live less than an hour's drive from all this beauty.
So during the heatwave in July 2022, in the relative cool of the evening, we parked up alongside the beach at Prestatyn for a walk along the sand, with me keeping a weather eye on how the sunset might develop with a band of heavy haze blanketing the horizon.
Back at our car, I wasn't too hopeful of being able to film a sunset with all that haze around, but with the sun still visible and the sky colouring up nicely, I decided to give it a go.
One of the great things about sunsets on the North Wales coast was the building, a few years ago now, of the Gwynt-y-Môr offshore wind farm.
The wind farm's 160 giant turbines line the far horizon, and with a reasonably clear sky in summer, the sun will set over the rotating blades, making a sunset photoshoot a lot more interesting and impactful than just a plain horizon.
So more in hope than expectation I started shooting the hundreds of still images needed to create just a few seconds of time lapse video.
But after a few minutes my fears were realised as the sun disappeared into that heavy bank of murky air and the scene turned grey and lifeless.
So I had a choice to make.
Did I pack up and head home, or did I wait it out to see if the sun would reappear closer to the turbines.
So I chose to wait and see, and I'm so glad I did, as after a few more minutes the sun started to emerge from underneath the thickest band of haze, glowing a pinky red colour as all the shorter wavelenths of blue light were filtered out by the particulate laden air.
And this continued all the way down to the horizon, with the sun finally setting behind the rotating silhouettes of the Gwynt-y-Môr turbines at the end of a super hot day.
Needless to say I was buzzing on the drive abck home!
Filename - prestatyn sunset timelapse 04
Camera - Canon EOS 6DMK2
Lens (1st clip) - 100-400-40mm zoom @ 150mm
Lens (2nd clip) - 100-400mm zoom @ 400mm
Exposure (start of sequence) - 1/500 sec @ f/5.6, ISO100
Exposure (end of sequence) - 1/40 sec @ f/5.6, ISO100
Filters - None.
Shooting interval (1st clip) - 4 seconds
Shooting interval (2nd clip) - 2 seconds
Software - Adobe Lightroom and Premiere Pro
Music - Blizzards - Riot
Location - Prestatyn, North Wales
This clip - HD 720p, 30fps (4K and 1080p HD formats also available)
Clip duration - 30 seconds
All content copyright © Howard Litherland 2009-2023 unless otherwise stated.