That's the thing with sunsets, you never know what you're going to get.
Especially in a region such as North Wales, with active, constantly changing weather blowing in from over the Irish sea to the west.
Which is one of the reasons I never tire of watching and filming these, sometimes, awe inspiring events.
For this particular sunset in early October 2024 my wife Liz and I went to one of our favourite west facing stretches of the north Wales coast, the beautiful West Shore beach at llandudno.
Much less commercial and developed than the famous North Shore seafront, the West Shore is a much quieter and, in my opinion, lovelier, aspect of Llandudno, and a great place to watch a sunset from.
However, on this evening I didn't hold out much hope of seeing any sunset at all, with a band of heavy cloud lying close to the western horizon and no sign of the sun.
But bearing in mind previous occasions where I've given up photographing only to have the sun break through and provide a spectacular light display which I then missed, much to my chagrin, I decided to set up and start capturing the hundreds of still images needed to create a time lapse video.
So imagine my delight and what happened just a few minutes after I'd started filming, as the sun found a tiny gap in the clouds just above the horizon and golden light flooded the scene for just a couple of minutes as the sun set.
Another thing I'd learnt over the years of filming sunsets is that the best might still be to come, and it's worth keeping on filming for half an hour or so after sunset, just in case the sun, now below the horizon, finds another gap in the clouds and sends beams of light, now at the red end of the spectrum, upwards to underlight the visible clouds.
And after a few more minutes that's just what happened, rounding off a sunset that was way more dramatic and colourful that I first thought it would be from my initial assessment of the cloud cover.
I'm certainly glad I'd learnt from my previous mistakes, and not given up!
Filename - llandudno sunset timelapse 32
Camera - Canon EOS6DMK2
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 50mm
Exposure (start of sequence) - 1/40 sec @ f/4, ISO100
Exposure (end of sequence) - 1/5 sec @ f/4, ISO100
Filters - 2/3 Stop neutral density reverse graduated filter used to reduce the brightness of the sky, especially close to the horizon.
Shooting interval - 4 seconds
Location - West Shore beach, Llandudno, North Wales
Music - Shattered Paths - Aakash Gandhi
This clip - HD 720p, 30fps (4K and 1080p HD formats also available)
Clip duration - 23 seconds
All content copyright © Howard Litherland 2009-2024 unless otherwise stated.