Every summer, for around three weeks either side of the solstice on June 21st, I have a window of opportunity that allows me to get up very early, drive to the North Wales coast or the mountains and photograph at sunrise before driving back to my factory to start the 'normal' working day.
Physically demanding but very worthwhile both in terms of photographing great stuff in beautiful light and just the sheer joy of being out alone with God in the stillness of the dawn.
Mind you, with the weather in this part of the world being so unstable, it usually works out that there's only two or three days when conditions are actually suitable for a photography excursion, so I pay a great deal of attention to the weather forecasts!
The forecast for the morning of 16th July looked good, with a clear patch of sky over Snowdonia at sunrise, so bursting with hope I set off for the mountains at 2.45am, to be in position, ready to start shooting, at around 4am, an hour before sunrise.
I knew the spot I wanted to be in before I set off. You don't want to be hunting round for a view when the light is getting better and better.
My chosen spot was on the shores of Llym Mymbyr in the Snowdonia National Park, as, with the help of my Photographer's Ephemeris app, I knew that the sun would rise from behind me and strike the peaks of the Snowdon Horseshoe to the west of the lake.
Well, when I arrived at my spot in the pre-dawn twilight I was delighted to see that there was no wind, so the surface of the lake was showing a great reflection of the dimly lit mountains in the distance.
But the icing on the cake was (were?) the tendrils of mist rising up from the relatively warm water which added a fantastic ethereal feel to the scene, and looked really good on the finished time lapse video as well.
Having set my camera and tripod up on a rock on the lakeshore, I then spent the next two hours watching as the light grew in intensity before finally the sun rose, striking the far peaks with a red glow which cascaded down from the mountains to eventually light the rock on which I was standing.
Shortly after that, the sun disappeared into a bank of cloud, drawing a veil of shadow over the landscape, but I wasn't bothered as it was time to pack up and head to work anyway, in a happy daze having overdosed on beauty on this most lovely of mornings.
Filename - llyn mymbyr_timelapse 04.mp4
Camera - Canon EOS 6D
Lens 24-105mm zoom @ 32mm
Exposure (start of sequence)
6 secs @ f4, ISO100
Exposure (end of sequence)
1/5 sec @ f16, ISO100
Capture interval - 6 secs
Location - Llynau Mymbyr, Snowdonia, Wales
This clip - HD 720p
Clip duration - 35 seconds
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