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’ve just created an online gallery at the awesome looking site – Behance.net. It’s a gallery full of my Panorama’s that I post here – but all together, which is really nice to see. I will be updating it quite often I imagine, I have tonnes of panorama’s I need to finish stitching, and I’ll be going up Mountains very often, so there will always be some pictures to take.
I spent a lovely weekend back home in North Wales, out everyday on the Hills, and catching up with friends. I managed to catch some sun, and got sunburned – in October!! – and take some pictures, as I do. I’ve got quite a lot to stitch together, but here’s one I’ve just completed.
Snowdonia, taken from Nantlle Ridge
The image is taken from Craig Cwm Silyn, a part of the Nantlle Ridge, looking along towards Tal-y-Mignedd, with the ridge connecting to Trum y Ddysgl swooping to the right. Snowdon Massif i sitting quietly in the centre-right of the image, with the Glyderau disappearing into the distance.
It was a lovely day out on the hills. Stay tuned for more images!
Over the weekend I headed up home to North Wales for the weekend. It was a lovely wee break – I got to hang out with my lovely friends, and walk out in the Mountains. It was nice escaping the busy life that is London, but I was quite shocked to see so many people out and about walking in Snowdonia.
I took my camera with me, and managed to take a few epic panoramas of the views from the Glyderau:
TryfanGlyder FawrDyffryn Ogwen
The first is the view of Tryfan, the second is of Glyder Fawr with the Snowdon Horeshoe in the background, and the third is looking down Dyffryn Ogwen/Nant Ffrancon.
Good times. I have set up an online shop – I’m just about to branch out into the different options of printing these bad boys out, figuring out what the best way of doing it – so if you fancy placing an order for any of my photographs, please feel free to contact me, and I will direct you to my online shop once I have it open to the public.
We had an awesome Winter in Wales in 2009. Really awesome snow, which made walking in the Mountains a fantastic experience. I managed to take this panorama from the summit of Cnicht a couple of days after Christmas.
Gaeaf ar Cnicht / Winter on Cnicht
This beast is stitched together from 12 photographs. I’m really happy with the result, apart from the ghosting effect on the rocks, far right of the image, which I will address in the next pass of cleaning up the image. Snowdon and his friends are on the left hand side of the photo.
I’m getting really into Photo-stitching at the minute. I’m about to make my prints for sale through an on-line shop, so keep an eye out – I’ll be ‘going live’ in a few days I imagine.
I’m in the process of designing a website for our walking group up in Snowdonia, North Wales. Here are a couple of designs I’ve come up with so far:
These will be banners for different sections of the website. We’re still looking for a proper name for the group – ‘Mynyddoedd Cymru’ simply means ‘Welsh Mountains’ – but we want something that will stand out and be cool. If anyone can think of something good – please feel free to post it in the comments section.
