A rare November evening with clear skies and no wind had me all excited at the prospect of photographing the stars wheeling over the waters of Llyn Mymbyr in the Snowdonia National Park, just an hour's drive from my home in northeast Wales.
So with the temperature heading down below 0°C as I parked up overlooking the lake, I was mightly glad I'd equipped myself with multiple layers of thermal clothing and a flask of hot coffee, in addition to the fully laden LowePro camera rucksack and tripod slung on my back.
It was only a short climb down to my chosen vantage point by the lakeshore, a spot I'd photographed from many times in the past so I knew where I was heading in the gathering darkness, but even so I managed to trip over a bramble and take a tumble!
Once recovered and safely down by the water I set up my equipment, ready to take the hundreds of still images needed to create just a few seconds time lapse video.
Setting up a camera for a sub-zero night time shoot by water on a still, misty night is quite a process, involving an intervalometer to control the camera and a home made lens warmer to keep the dew at bay, in addtion with all the normal adjustments and precautions one takes on a photographic shoot, and I've learnt from hard experience that skimping or missing out these time consuming tasks will result in failure of one sort or another.
But finally everything was ready and I set the camera off taking an exposure every ten seconds, with me making small exposure adjustments as the light levels dropped throught the various stages of twilight until a fully dark sky to the west was achieved.
It was a lovely night, with the stars clearly visible overhead and also reflecting in the mirror-like surface of Llym Mymbyr at my feet.
But the night didn't stay dark for long, as a nearly full moon rose to the east behind me, casting its bright beams first of all on the far of peaks of the Snowdon Horseshoe and then slowly lighting up the sky and landscape in stages until finally reaching the shoreline rocks just in front of my camera.
After three hours shooting it was finally time to pack up and head back to the car for the drive home, buzzing, with my head and heart full of the beauty of God's astronomical clockwork in action.
Filename - llyn mymbyr night timelapse 01
Camera - Canon EOS 6DMK2
Lens - 14mm prime
Exposure (start of sequence) - 1/4 sec @ f/2.8, ISO100
Exposure (end of sequence) - 8 secs @ f/2.8, ISO3200
Filters - None.
Shooting interval - 10 seconds
Music - 're The Ocean' by Andy Litherland.
Location - Llyn Mymbyr, Snowdonia, North Wales
This clip - HD 720p, 30fps (4K and 1080p HD formats also available)
Clip duration - 41 seconds
All content copyright © Howard Litherland 2009-2024 unless otherwise stated.