A typical cloudy late autumn afternoon at Llandudno on the North wales coast ended unexpectedly as the setting sun found a gap in the clouds on the horizon and shone a searchlight beam of horizontal golden light onto the scene.
This was one of those rare but wonderful occurences when I was in the right place, at the right time, with camera equipment to hand and able to capture this fleeting moment of ethereal beauty.
My wife Liz and I had enjoyed a stroll along Llandudno's promenade and we were making our way by car along the panoramic drive around the Great Orme heading for the West Shore when this shaft of light hit the Little Orme over on the far side of Llandudno Bay.
I screeched to a halt in a convenient layby (how often does that happen?!) and rapidly assembled my camera gear, including tripod and ND grad filter, to get as many exposures as I could before the shaft of light disappeared.
Below me the lights of Llandudno's Victorian pier had just come on, while away on the far horizon that shaft of light was just catching the turbines of the Colwyn Bay windfarm.
Wow! This was an absolutely fantastic combination of lighting effects, all in one frame.
We had the cool blue twilight tones of the clouds and sea contrasting sharply with the narrow band of golden hued light from the sun along the horizon, while the artifical lights on the pier served to break up the expanse of relative dark tones in the lower half of the composition.
I was just buzzing as I tried two or three different framings, of which this was one of the best, before the sun dipped once again into cloud and the scene turned a uniform grey before my eyes.
Just a couple of minutes of absolute wonder, captured forever in this image.
Filename - llandudno pier 19.jpg
Camera - Canon EOS 6D
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 25mm
Exposure - 1/10 sec @ f11, ISO100
Location - Llandudno, North Wales
This image - 800x450px JPEG
Conversion - Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop CC
Comments - Tripod, mirror lockup and cable release used to prevent camera movement
All content copyright © Howard Litherland 2009-2024 unless otherwise stated.