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The Snowdonia National Park in North Wales is renowned as an area of outstanding natural beauty, with dramatic mountains, hidden valleys, forests, waterfalls and a beautiful coastline.
But Snowdonia is also very much a man-made landscape, sculpted over the centuries by generations of farmers, miners and builders, whose efforts are still very much in evidence across the park.
Any maybe nowhere more so that at the lower end of the magnificent Nant Ffrancon valley, heavily mined for slate in times gone by, with huge piles of spoil to testify to the riches extracted from this area.
But another, gentler, mark that man has left on this landscape are the miles and miles of drystones walls that criss-cross Snowdonia's mountains and valleys, some regularly repaired and some left to decay.
The drystone walls bordering the Nant Ffrancon valley path that my wife Liz and I enjoyed hiking along during the winter of 2019 looked to be in a good state of repair, with the interlacing slabs of slate forming very attractive little tableaux of patterns, textures, forms and colours.
Filename - snowdonia drystone wall leaves 02
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 60mm
Exposure - 1/2 sec @ f8, ISO100
Filters - Polarising filter used to enhance colours.
Location - Nant Ffrancon, Snowdonia, North Wales
Image enhancements - Adobe Lightroom
Comments - Tripod, remote release and mirror lockup used to prevent camera movement.
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