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One of my wife Liz's and my favourite stopping points on our travels around the Snowdonia National Park is the Moel Siabod Café.
Not only can you get enormous home baked scones here, but the café is also home to the Soul of Snowdonia photographic gallery, well worth a look around to see what sort of images of Snowdonia can be had by living locally and getting up early!
Anyhow, while perusing the gallery I came across a stunning image of somewhere I'd never seen before, Marchlyn Mawr reservoir, high up in the Glyderau mountains at the foot of Elidir Fawr, photographed by Nick Livesey.
Well, what more incentive do you need for a photo expedition!
Nick Livesey actually works at the Moel Siabod Café, and he was kind enough to show us on a large scale map exactly where Marchlyn Mawr was, and directions on how to get there, so after finishing our coffees and scone (one between two is quite enough!) we headed off.
Following Nick's directions we soon found ourselves at the end of a country lane above Dinorwig where we had to park up and climb up a well tarmaced but locked off road up to the reservoir.
The reason for the road is that Marchlyn Mawr is the upper reservoir for the fantastic and James Bondesque Electric Mountain stored hydro electric generating station, and maintenance vehicles need to get up there on a regular basis.
It was quite a hike on a gentle uphill gradient to the dam and reservoir, but the scenery on the way up was absolutely lovely, with the whole of Anglesey visible from the high elevation.
Just a little way below Marchlyn Mawr itself we came across Marchlyn Bach, pictured here in this panoramic collage and looking lovely in the late afternoon sun, backed by the impressive peak of Elidir Fawr.
So we had a liitle rest while I took the sweep of individual frames required for the panoramic stitch.
A lovely little bonus on the way up to the larger lake.
Filename - marchlyn bach panorama 01
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 24mm
Exposure - 1/25 sec @ f11, ISO100
Filters - 2 stop neutral density graduated filter used to reduce the brightness of the sky. Polarising filter used to reduce glare and enhance colours.
Location - Marchlyn Bach, Snowdonia National Park, North Wales
Conversion - Adobe Lightroom and PhotoShop CC
Comments - Panoramic image made by stitching multiple exposures
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