Click on the image for licensing terms
A lovely rare sunny day in North Wales was all the encouragement my wife Liz and I needed to head to the mountains of the Snowdonia National Park, only about an hour's drive from our home.
The day was incredibly bright, with the air washed clean of haze by the recent passing of a cold front leaving the sunlit landscape sparkling.
Taking photos in such light, however, is tricky, as contrast levels are well outside a camera's sensors ability to cope.
The best solution to this problem is to wait until the 'golden hour' just before sunset when the light is much more gentle, before taking your photo.
But in the mountains this can be a problem as the peaks hide the sun a long time before natural sunset would occur, throwing the valleys into unwanted shadow.
The next best solution to the problem of excessive contrast would be the use of a strong neutral density graduated filter to darken the sky and thereby reduce the overall contrast of the scene to something the camera's sensor can cope with.
This works great where you have a flat horizon, such as the coast, but in the mountains a graduated filter has the effect of darkening the peaks as well as the sky, thus defeating the object of the exercise.
Fortunately, however, there's a third (and fourth) way to overcome this problem of excessive contrast, and that is to take multiple exposures of the same scene at a range of shutter speeds, starting off with a fast shutter speed that gives an exposure suitable for the bright sky, and finishing with a slow shutter speed that gives an exposure suitable for areas of the landscape in shadow.
So long as the individual shots were taken without the camera moving, i.e. firmly mounted on a tripod, these different exposures can be blended together by hand using layers and layer masks in Photoshop, or alternatively blended using HDR (high dynamic range) algorithms in Adobe Lightroom.
For this image of Llyn Gwynant by the side of Snowdon in the Snowdonia National Park, North Wales, I used a combination of both approaches, Loading both an HDR rendition and an exposure suitable for the sky into Photoshop and then manaully blending the two layers with a layer mask.
Quite a lot of effort to go to, but for such a lovely view it was worth it.
Filename - llyn gwynant 03.jpg
Camera - Canon 6D
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 28mm
Exposure - Various @ f11, ISO100
Location - Llyn Gwynant, Snowdonia National Park, North Wales
This image - 800x450px JPEG
Conversion - Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop CC
Comments - Tripod, mirror lock up and cable release used to prevent camera movement. Multiple exposures used to cope with excessive contrast range.
All content copyright © Howard Litherland 2009-2026 unless otherwise stated.