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The perfect end to a pretty perfect day spent exploring the beauties of the southern end of the Snowdonia National Park found my wife Liz and I parked up on a narrow pensinsula at Fairbourne on the mid Wales coast.
The view to the right was a lovely scene out over the peak of everyones' favourite mountain, Cader Idris, while stretched out in front of us was the vast expanse of the Mawddach Estuary, crossed by the very impressive rail and foot bridge.
To the left (north in our case), over a low range of sand dunes, lay the mouth of the Afon Mawddach, with the seaside town of Barmouth nestled snugly against the side of a small mountain on the far side of the tidal river.
I'd spent a couple of hours at this spot, with camera trained up the estuary taking the stills for my 'Tide on the Mawddach Estuary' time lapse video as the sun set into the sea just to the left of Barmouth, hidden behind those dunes.
It took a great deal of self-discipline not to finish the time lapse shoot early and rush off to photograph the sunset occuring over my shoulder, as twilight colours arched across the sky overhead.
Eventually I had the time lapse images in the bag (or rather, on the card) so I picked up camera, tripod and other paraphenalia and ran over the dunes to catch the last of the twilight colour to the west.
But things were not as straightforward as I had hoped, as I wanted to include both the twilight colours and the lights of Barmouth in the same shot, and they were too far apart.
So puffing and panting, I had to level my tripod in the sand and set up the camera with an ND filter to take multiple images for a later stitch into this panorama.
I'm rather glad I did make the effort, as the panoramic format, with the curved pebble beach at the bottom, really suits this scene.
Now I have this plan to return and shoot this scene again as a time lapse, as I reckon the transition from day to night, with the lights of Barmouth coming on, would be just magical.
Let's hope I can make it!
Filename - barmouth panorama 01.jpg
Camera - Canon 6D
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 65mm
Exposure - 2 secs @ f11, ISO100
Location - Barmouth, Wales
This image - 1200x240px JPEG
Conversion - Adobe Lightroom and PhotoShop CC
Comments - Panoramic image made by stitching multiple exposures
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