Freezing cold - tick. Howling wind - tick. Rain, hail and sleet - tick. Beautiful light and dramatic clouds - tick.
Normal conditions for photography on the North Wales coast then - particularly in January which is when the sun sets to the southwest over the headlands of Penmaenmawr and Llanfairfechen, as viewed from Llandudno's West Shore.
So this is me, huddled by my tripod which is weighted down with a bag filled with stones from the beach, nervously watching in case that bag of stones proves not man enough for the job and my tripod blows over (it's happened before!).
I'm determined to keep on shooting until sunset, watching as beams from the sun find holes in the wrack and sweep over the sea and sky like searchlights.
This is great time lapse material so long as I can keep my camera still, and it's certainly worth a bit of discomfort to capture.
But just before sunset a band of wind driven hail sweeps over me and my camera, stinging my legs through double skinned trousers in its enthusiasm and hammering into the ND grad filter I'd been using over my lens to darken the sky.
Enough is finally enough and I grab my camera, tripod and all and throw them onto the back seat of my car as I make a dive for the front.
Even though I didn't capture the moment of actual sunset, I found when I came to process the video that the pre-sunset action was still well worth seeing, as this time lapse shows.
Filename - sunset timelapse 17.mp4
Camera - Canon EOS 6D
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 24mm
Exposure - 1/15 sec @ f16, ISO100
Location - Llandudno, North Wales
This clip - HD 720p
Clip duration - 28 seconds at 25 frames per second.
Shooting interval - 3 seconds
All content copyright © Howard Litherland 2009-2024 unless otherwise stated.