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A full moon was shining brightly over the mountains and lakes of the Snowdonia National Park as my wife Liz and I were making our way back home along the wonderful A5, having spent a couple of daylight hours touring around admiring the snow draped landscape.
Night falls early in December at a latitude of 53°N, and it was only 7pm when I pulled into the layby by the side of Llyn Ogwen to see how the Glyderau mountains looked with their snowy peaks reflecting the light of the moon.
My plan was to spend an hour or so here, taking a few hundred still images to make into a time lapse video of the stars and clouds wheeling over the mountains, and so I set up my camera gear full of hope and good intentions.
But soon I hit a snag, in that I hadn't taken account of oncoming traffic with bright headlights ruining my shoot.
So after a few frustrating minutes I called it a night and packed everything away again for the drive back home.
Before deleteing all the files from this abortive shoot I had a quick look through and found a few frames without traffic headlights that looked pretty good.
This image is a typical example of what I found, a surreal landscape, with almost daylight type lighting from the very bright moon shining on the snow and lake, but with stars in the sky.
Well worth keeping as a single image, but I would have loved to have been able to make a time lapse on that night.
Never mind - at least I've got a good excuse to go back again!
Filename - llyn ogwen night 01.jpg
Camera - Canon 6D
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 47mm
Exposure - 15 secs @ f4, ISO3200
Filters - None.
Location - Llyn Ogwen, Snowdonia National Park, North Wales
This image - 800x533px JPEG
Conversion - Adobe Lightroom
Comments - Tripod and cable release used to prevent camera movement.
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