It's been a while since I posted here, regular readers will know that I usually post trip reports about my backpacking trips in uk mountainous regions. Around a year ago my love of Landscape photography had grown to a point where it was my main motivation for getting out. I wanted to invest in myself and new equipment, initially this was a new camera, lenses,filters and a good sturdy carbon tripod. All these things don't come cheap, and so after a great deal of thought I sold off most of my beloved ultralight backpacking gear. My intention was to concentrate on day walks with a view to photographing sunrise and sunset. I soon realised, that with an average time of around 2 1\2 hrs to reach the mountains that trying to do it in a single trip was very hard and tiring.. it would be much easier to wildcamp so that I could (hopefully) be in the right place when the light happened. It didn't take long for me to reinvest in some basic wildcamping gear. Since my last post I've done quite a few landscape photography backpacking trips, but up till now I've not documented them, partially due to the fact that I wanted to find my feet, and as the mths went passed the desire to sit down and write blogposts diminished.
So hopefully this will be the 1st of many Landscape photography trips that I'll write a blog about.
Keeping an eye on the forecast a week before this trip, it became obvious that the weekend would, for a change, bring excellent winter conditions to the mountains of Snowdonia. A rucksack full of camera & winter backpacking gear was loaded into my van and I set off very early.. around 3 am ! to get some height for when the sun came up. As usual I didn't sleep well the night before.. the excitement and vision of snowy mountains ensured that.
At around 6 am I was on my way into the winter wonderland, that feeling that you know you're in for a great couple of days is 1 that can only be appreciated by the backpacking photographer. My route was to take me around the western shore of Llyn Idwal, then up through the devels kitchen before ascending to Glyder Fawr.
Once I reached Glyder Fawr I headed through some quite deep snow drifts to a sheltered pitch I'd used before where I stopped for lunch. Unfortunately a couple of walkers had seen, and followed my tracks, arriving just as my water was boiling for a coffee. They looked a little confused before asking " which way to the cantilever stone? " I pointed them back to the main path and gave them directions, I hope they found it.
A leisurely lunch followed, I was in no hurry to move on and sat there for around 30 mins watching the mist come and go and the play of light across the land. Eventually I tore myself away and continued over Glyder Fach. Heading down from the summit I spotted a couple of hikers who I presumed were wild camping and as they had tripods attached to their packs they were also photographers. As I got closer we exchanged greetings and I recognised 1 of them from twitter. It was Grant who was also planning to wildcamp near Castell y Gwynt - his friend (whose name I can't remember.. sorry ) was just out for the day. On our way over to Glyder Fach we were joined by another couple of photographers who were also planning to wildcamp that night - Tom & Chris. I have camped on Glyder Fach quite a few times, the last being a few weeks previous where I hoped to get a good sunrise shot of castell.. thick clag moved in just before sunrise and continued through the night and into the morning, I did get 1 reasonable photo from that trip, but would have loved to get the classic view of Snowdon behind.. hence the revisit.
Eventually we arrived at our camp site very near to Castell y Gwynt and after pitching our tents we set of to expore the summit area for compositions for sunset & sunrise the next morning.
Although I didn't get the sunset light I was after there was some very atmospheric cloud around.. I grabbed a few shots that I'm happy with before making my way back to the tent for warm food and my usual celebratory Whisky .. always a good single malt. The stiff wind combined with the clag rolling in saw us all retreat back to our individual shelters where I lay, warm in my sleeping bag, gazing out through an open tent door. I love winter camping , the sunrise & sunset times means plenty of tent time for eating , sleeping and drinking.. hot drinks as well as the rest of the whisky were had before I drifted off, praying the sunrise would bring the light we were all after.
My alarm went off around 6am and I opened a stiff frosty tent door to a fantastic clear mountain view, water was put onto boil for my morning coffee and I began to get ready for the morning shoot.
On arrival at my chosen composition there was already a photographer there who had set out a 3 am to reach the summit.. fair play to him. Although I couldn't get the shot I was after I was very pleased to get some great blue hour / sunrise shots. The pinks of the blue sky were almost alpine in nature.. another of the reasons why for me, winter is my favourite season.. you just don't get colour like this at any other time of the year. Shortly before the sun rose we were joined by another photographer, I later found out he was a friend of Gregg Whitton.. pleased to meet you Rob. With our photography fixes satisfied we made our way back to strike camp, a final coffee, then we descended back to our vans parked in the Ogwen valley. A breakfast in the Moel Siabod café rounded of the trip nicely- Thanks for the company guys. I had intented to be back in Snowdonia this weekend, but a dose of man flu has put paid to that... now where my Lemsips.
Thanks for taking the time to read.. I'll leave you with some pics for sunrise.
