Nantlle Ridge - Iestyn Roberts' Blog

January 26, 2014January 26, 2014

Pen-y-Cilgwyn, Nantlle Ridge.

As I spent all of my Christmas holiday relaxing to the max in Germany, I decided to head over to Wales to say ‘hello’ to my family and friends the second weekend of January – and for a second Christmas.

Since I don’t get the chance to go out much around Dublin/Ireland these days, I often look on Flickr to see of any nice locations people are finding in Wales, and making a list of where to visit when I get the chance to head back home. However, this time – by pure coincidence, I came across an very small thumbnail of the Nantlle Ridge, taken from somewhere that I’ve never seen before. I personally love the Nantlle Ridge, I’ve always tried my best to capture it as best as I can – but this new view I saw from the thumbnail was mighty epic. I put my OS Map skills to work, and quickly figured out that it was taken from above Cilgwyn, on a wee hill called Pen-y-Cilgwyn. This was somewhere I’ve never visited before (in all my years living literally 5mins away) as it leads up to the Cilgwyn landfill site – but boy! does it have a view – my personal new favourite view of the Nantlle Ridge:

The last image is of the mighty Snowdon Horseshoe – taken from a wee lay-by in Dyffryn Mymbyr, as I drove around taking in the landscape when I don’t get a chance to head up to the mountains when I’m home.

August 18, 2013

Snowdonia Winter, early 2013

As I’ve updated my photography section I decided to head into my iPhoto to look for any un-stitched/edited panoramas that I might have hanging around, and boy – I found a couple of what I thought was really nice. I’m not too sure why they were left un-stitched, as I really love they way the came out, especially the first one, looking towards Snowdon (on the left), with the Nantlle Ridge swooping to the right, and Moel Hebog standing strong in the distance.

The last is somewhat different. When I headed over to Wales a couple of weekends back to see my family and for my big Birthday, I decided one evening to scout the land for possible location ideas for a short film that I’m currently thinking about animating. I really like the location, and the old tree is perfect. Taken from the slopes of Mynydd Mawr, in Dyffryn Nantlle.

January 22, 2013January 22, 2013

Llyn Nantlle, Dyffryn Nantlle, Snowdonia.

Hello, it’s been rather quiet here over the last few months – I’ll post an update fairly soon. I’m still working, and loving it over at Brown Bag Films in Dublin, so I’m extremely busy these days, with very little time to create my own animations – but I did head home to Wales over the weekend to see my family, and to celebrate Christmas.

It was super snowy, sunny and epic – I managed to sneak out for a quick few hours with my camera, so I thought I’d share this shot with the World:

Llyn Nantlle, Dyffryn Nantlle, Snowdonia.

June 29, 2012

Dyffryn Nantlle

As I’m currently back in Wales, every evening I try to head on out to the mountains with my camera, to have a break from my computer. Here’s a couple I’ve taken this last week:

The first is of the fantastic Llyn Nantlle. I was really lucky to capture this – after driving like a fool in the new van to try and capture the great contrast between the mountains and the skies, I only took one photo, and the sun sank really fast behind the clouds, and after hanging around for a good 30 mins, there was no sign of it ever coming back. But I was really happy with the result.

The second if the view from the summit of my favorite mountain – Mynydd Mawr, looking over towards the Nantlle Ridge. The lake from which the first image is taken from can be seen in the Valley below.

November 21, 2011November 21, 2011

Photography

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.

November 17, 2011

Cwm Bwlch y Moch, Snowdonia

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.

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.

June 9, 2011April 5, 2012

Llyn Nantlle, an epic panorama

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.

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 Gyffes see 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‘