Twice a year, around the end of February and the beginning of November, I get the opportunity to watch and film the sun setting over the peaks of the Snowdon Horseshoe mountains in the Snowdonia National Park in North Wales.
This view, overlooking the beautiful Llyn Mymbyr, is one of the most photographed in the park, and you can usually find a few photographers stumbling over the rocks that line the shore of the lake, looking for elusive light.
And light can be pretty elusive here, as the high ground acts as a cloud generator, lifting and cooling the damp winds coming in over the Irish Sea from the west so that, more often than not, the landscape is blanketed under at thick layer of vapour.
Things were looking pretty hopeless as I squelched through the bog to my chosen viewpoint on the shores of Llyn Mymbyr, with not a sight of the sun, nor of any sunlight penetrating the cloud cover over the snow dusted peak of Snowdon.
But I hadn't come all this way to just give up, so I doggedly set up my camera and tripod and started shooting the hundreds of still images needed to create a time lapse video.
And I'm certainly glad I did, as the clouds thinned, allowing sunbeams to break through and bathe the landscape in dramatic light.
I even managed to catch the sun for a brief moment in time as a gap in the clouds just above the mountains coincided with the sun just about to disappear.
So in the end, even though I didn't catch the sunset as I planned, I was well pleased with the wonderful light show I had been treated to.
Filename - snowdon sunset timelapse 02
Camera - Canon EOS 6DMK2
Lens (1st clip)- 24-105mm zoom @ 24mm
Lens (2nd clip) - 24-105mm zoom @ 84mm
Exposure (start of sequence) - 1/125 sec @ f/4, ISO100
Exposure (end of sequence) - 1/250 sec @ f/4, ISO100
Filters - 2 stop neutral density graduated filter used to reduce the brightness of the sky relative to the foreground.
Shooting interval - 2 seconds
Music - Bach Cello Suite No. 1, G Major, Prelude - Cooper Cannell.
Location - Llyn Mymbyr, Snowdonia, North Wales
This clip - HD 720p, 30fps (4K and HD formats also available)
Clip duration - 52 seconds
All content copyright © Howard Litherland 2009-2023 unless otherwise stated.