Alwen Reservoir, North Wales

Alwen Reservoir #4

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The story behind this image

Much less well known and less visited than its more popular neighbour, Llyn Brenig, the Alwen Reservoir in North Wales is, in my opinion, much lovelier.

Surrounded by mature woodland, and facing north west from the dammed end, this is a great place to go for a walk on a summer's evening, followed by a photography session from the dam itself, looking towards the sunset.

Normally, photographing the setting sun can be an exercise in futility as the extreme contrast range in such a scene wipes out all detail from either the sky or the land, depending on how you set your exposure.

But on this evening, in mid-July, the sky was partially overcast with thin wispy clouds which took the edge off the sun's brightness and allowed me to take quite an evocative image of the lake and clouds, with the bright spot of the diffused sun adding an attractive highlight to the sky.

My initial exposures were OK, but lacked a certain mood, so I fitted my 10 stop neutral density Lee 'Big Stopper' filter to the front of my lens which, combined with a 3 stop neutral density graduated filter to further darken the sky, a very small lens aperture of f22 and a low ISO of 50, allowed me a shutter speed of a full two minutes, as opposed to the 'normal' exposure time of fractions of a second.

This super-long exposure transformed the photo into an image just oozing mood and mystery, with the water movement smoothed into a ghostly blur and the clouds rendered as surreal streaks, backlit by the bright disk of the setting sun.

These moving elements contrasted very nicely with the sharply defined tree lined banks of the reservoir, rendered in silhouette by the brightness of the sky and water.

The final transformation caused by the ten stop neutral density filter was to impart a cool blue colour cast to the lit parts of the composition, an effect that I originally removed in Adobe Lightroom, but then re-instated as the colour cast added a certain something to the mood of the final image.

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Image data

Filename - alwen reservoir 4

Camera - Canon 6D

Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 24mm

Exposure - 120 secs @ f22, ISO50

Filters - 10 stop neutral density filter to prolong the exposure plus 3 stop neutral density graduated filter to darken the sky

Location - Alwen Reservoir, North Wales

This image - 800x533px JPEG

Conversion - Adobe Lightroom

Comments - Tripod, remote release and mirror lock-up used to prevent camera movement