Schauinsland is a hill, located to the South East of Freiburg, with an elevation of 1,284 m. At the beginning of the week, I was dropping off my girlfriend at work for around 7am, so I decided to go up the Hill to try and capture the sunrising behind Felberg – which his biggest hill here in the Black Forest. It was a lovely morning, not a soul was around – except for a curious wee fox.
The Moon
Alps on the Horizon
On the images above, the Swiss Alps can be seen on the horizon, and the moon setting behind me as I watched the sunset.
I’m slowly in the process of re-vamping a lot of my website, especially how the photography section works. I’ve decided to use a pretty great Flickr Plug-in for my gallery, which does a great job at displaying my images.
Use the drop-down menu under the Photography tab at the top of the page to view my photos.
Here’s a couple of new Panorama images I’ve just stitched together today. The first is from Cors y Fron, located just outside the Snowdonia National Park, on the way out of Y Fron towards Llyn Ffynhonnau and Mynydd Mawr. The wee ruin is by far, located in one of the most beautiful spots in North Wales, overlooking nothing but the magnificent Nantlle Ridge. The second is a first try at a night panorama, taken ontop of Moel Eilio, on a Winters night, looking towards Y Glyderau and Snowdon. Snowdon is just under the moon.
An Autumn scene at Cors y FronGlyderau, Snowdon and the Moon
I headed back to North Wales for a couple of weeks to see my parents & friends, and to attend some meetings involving an animation project that I’ve been working on. As always, I took my camera out with me, but due to some pretty epic man-flu type symptoms, I didn’t manage to head on out into the mountains as much as I’d like.
Instead, I decided to experiment a bit with taking panoramas, which was great fun – as I’m getting a little bit tired of my normal panorama swoop. I headed on up into the Nantlle Valley, and came to Cwm Blwch y Moch, just North of Llyn y Dywarchen, which is nested just under Mynydd Mawr. This time, I tried to focus on a nice feature in the Cwm, as opposed to just a massive panorama sweeping across the landscape. I really enjoyed trying to capture the mood of the place.
Y GarnCwm Bwlch y Moch
For the first image, ‘Y Garn’ – I played around with the fisheye lens, and also graded the image, slightly de-saturating it, to try and bring out the feeling of the day a bit better.
Towards the end of 2010, I headed back home to Wales from London for a nice long weekend to see my friends and family, and to go walking a wee bit. (And to test out my new kit!)
On a chilly and windy day, I headed up to Cwm Idwal to walk up the beautiful hanging valley with Neil, John and Del the dog.
We only did a quick loop on this run, starting from the Idwal Cottages below, heading into the Cwm itself, round the lake and up towards Clogwyn y Geifr, from there we headed straight up Y Garn, and down the path that leads towards the Pinnacle Crag, doing a nice tidy loop of the valley.
Whilst ontop of Y Garn, we almost nearly had a full cloud inversion, but the clouds quickly disbursed, but the view towards Snowdon was fantastic.
Here’s a collection of Panoramas taken on the trek:
Cwm Idwal. Tryfan, Glyder Fach, Glyder Fawr. Snowdonia, North WalesSnowdon Inversion, taken from Y GarnCwm Idwal, looking towards Glyder Fawr & Castell y GeifrGod Rays, Cwm IdwalClimbing in Cwm Idwal
Towards the end of January, a couple of my old co-workers from Cotswold Outdoors, Covent Garden came up to spend the week with me, before I headed out to Germany. On the last day, we headed up to do a bit of the Snowdon Horse Shoe route (only with Larry, as Tariq twisted his knee and was unable to walk much), and I managed to snap a few panoramas while at the top of Lliwedd Bach – looking down into Cwm Dyli and Llyn Llydaw. It was a bitter cold day, but was great to be up on the hills, which I didn’t do much while I was down in London.
Llyn Llydaw & LarryLooking towards Snowdon, Lliwedd on the left
Hello. Over May, I headed back to Wales, as I was attending a very good Programme about Freelancing, down in Aberystwyth. It was good to spend nearly the whole month back home, as I got to do a lot of things that I wanted to do, and meet up with some good people.
One evening, after a pretty awesome storm, the sun came out, and lit up the dark clouds so beautifully, I just had to go out and try and shoot one of my favourite spots, Llyn Nantlle. The panorama is my biggest yet. 16 photographs make up this beast, and I’m really happy with how it turned out.
Llyn Nantlle
The view is quite beautiful, as on your right, you’ve got (Grib) Nantlle Ridge, and on the left, you’ve got one of my favourite mountains – Mynydd Mawr, and in between the two, in the centre, you’ve got Snowdon peaking through the gap.
The site is mentioned in the Old Welsh Manuscripts, Y Mabinogion – as Gwydion searches for Lleu Llaw Gyffessee here.
A painting of the same view was done by the Welsh Landscape painter, who I studied a lot in school, Richard Wilson in the 18th century titled ‘Snowdon from Llyn Nantlle’ which is on display at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, which I’ve always like:
Richard Wilson's 'Snowdon from Llyn Nantlle'
Edit: I seem to be getting a lot of traffic to this post from people looking for the Richard Wilson photo above – please check out the new Google Art Project image, where you can zoom in to reveal so many awesome detail about this painting here – Google Art ‘Snowdon from Llyn Nantlle‘
I had a chance to go back up to Scotland with a few friends from work to do some walking in the fresh snow that’s just been dumped up there. Whilst on top of Carn Dearg Medhonach, I managed to squeeze in this panorama of Ben Nevis, Carn Mor Dearg, a bit of the CMD Arete, and Fort William down the bottom:
Ben North Face, taken from Carn Dearg Med
It was a lovely day, got to use my crampons and Ice axe, which is always fun! Stay tuned for more pics from the Scottish Winter adventure! c
