Every year around midsummer I take the opportunity to make a dawn visit to Penmon Point on the south-easternmost tip of the Isle of Anglesey, just off the North Wales coast.
At this time of year. with sunrise around 5am, I've got the time to drive there, watch and film around sunrise, and still have time for the hour and a quarter drive back in order to get to work for my usual 8am start.
Mind you, getting there involves an alarm call at 2.45am, but that's a slight inconvenience compared with the stunning beauty and peace that sitting by the sea watching daylight arrive brings me.
Another advantage to this time of year is that the sun rises to the northwest, pretty much directly over Puffin Island, so all that fantastic pre-dawn colour is right where you want it, behind the iconic lighthouse that guards the passage between the island and Anglesey.
Every year that I come here the conditions of tide and weather are different, which makes for great and varied photographic and time lapse opportunities, so of course I try and take full advantage.
On this occasion, in the summer of 2016, we were in the middle of a mini heatwave, with hardly any cloud cover and no wind.
Couple those conditions with a very low tide at sunrise and I was able to get up close to the lighthouse to watch and film as the growing light spread across the sky, with the colours of the dawn reflecting in the still waters.
This is a very gentle time lapse, in which nothing dramatic happens, but even so it's a lovely thing to watch as the light changes.
Once I'd finished shooting the stills for this time lapse, I decided to shoot some real time video here as well, to give a better idea of what it's like to stand on the shoreline here at dawn, listening to the sound of the sea, the birds and the lighthouse warning bell while watching day unfold.
Just beautiful, and you can watch my Penmon Dawn video by following the link.
Filename - penmon timelapse 05.mp4
Camera - Canon EOS 6D
Lens - 17-40 zoom @ 17mm
Exposure (start of sequence) - 1.6 secs @f4, ISO100
Exposure (end of sequence) - 1/125sec @f4, ISO100
Shooting interval - 6 seconds
Location - Penmon Point, Anglesey, North Wales
This clip - HD 720p, 30fps
Clip duration - 16 seconds
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