Moel Eilio

I’ve just returned to Wales, and over the weekend I headed out, up to Moel Eilio as I haven’t been up there for a few months now. The sun was blasting, and there was only a few other people up at the top, who ran back down as quickly as they arrived, so I had the whole mountain to myself.

As it was around midday, the lighting wasn’t perfect, but I did manage to take a couple of panoramas of the view towards Snowdon.

Eryri / Snowdonia

Snowdon from Moel Eilio

Moel Eilio is located just North West from Snowdon itself, so the view is always pleasant, and is tagged at 726m high.

Schauinsland Sunrise

Schauinsland Sunrise

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.

A few old Panoramas, Snowdonia – North Wales

Something that I enjoy doing is to sit at my (our) desk, shifting through the wonderful iPhoto looking at my pictures. Every now and again, I come across some un-made panoramas that I took whilst out on my various adventures. Here are 4, relatively old panoramas, that I’ve just stitched up, and played around with. Some of these photographs are about 3 years old!

The first is taken from the road leading up Nant Gywnant, looking over towards Gallt y Wenallt with the Snowdon Horseshoe behind it. The second is taken from Dinas Dinlle, on a great Wintery evening. The third was taken when our walking group headed up Moel Lefn on a freezing cold Winter day, but the light was just fantastic, and the last – although not visually brilliant, is a panorama of my ‘5 square mile’, Dyffryn Nantlle, taken from Y Cilgwyn.

Gallt y Wenallt & the Snowdon Horeshoe, Nant Gwynant
Dinas Dinlle Piws
Moel Lefn, looking towards Criccieth
Dyffryn Nantlle o Parc Bel, Y Cilgwyn

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.

An Autumn scene at Cors y Fron
Glyderau, Snowdon and the Moon

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.

Y Garn
Cwm 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.

Cwm Idwal, Snowdonia. A Few Panoramas.

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 Wales
Snowdon Inversion, taken from Y Garn
Cwm Idwal, looking towards Glyder Fawr & Castell y Geifr
God Rays, Cwm Idwal
Climbing in Cwm Idwal

Lliwedd Bach, Cwm Dyli, Snowdonia – a Panorama

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 & Larry
Looking towards Snowdon, Lliwedd on the left