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Pont Pen-y-Benglog #1

The old stone arch bridge Pont Pen-y-Benglog at the end of Llyn Ogwen, Snowdonia, Wales

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The story behind this image

North Wales is chock full of interesting and ancient bits of architecture, and I've got a bit blasé about how much good stuff I have around me to photograph, but even I was quite taken aback when I first laid eyes on Pont Pen-y-Benglog.

This old stone arch is preserved underneath a larger road bridge carrying the A5 on its way to Holyhead, and I'd inadvertantly driven over it many times, even stopping to photograph the waterfall tumbling out of Llyn Ogwen into the Nant Ffrancon valley, without ever seeing it was there.

It took a good friend of mine who knows the area better than me to clue me in to the bridge's existence, but once I'd seen this remarkable structure I knew I had to have a photo of it for my collection of welsh oddities.

Actually getting this image proved far from easy, with a scramble over wet rocks to reach this shooting position followed by having to take five bracketed exposures for a later HDR blend in Photomatix Pro in order to capture the shadow detail under the bridge while also retaining texture and tonality in the flowing water.

Still, a little bit of extra effort was well worth it to have a reminder of such a quirky piece of Snowdonia's history.

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Image data

Filename - bridge ogwen 01.jpg

Camera - Canon 6D

Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 29mm

Exposure - various @ f22, ISO100

Location - Llyn Ogwen, Snowdonia, Wales

This image - 640x800px JPEG

Conversion - Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop CC

Comments - Blend of HDR and standard exposures.