There are only so many hours you can spend looking at a computer monitor, so even though my video editing work wasn’t finished, I decided to get some air in my lungs and wind on my face. As it was a last minute decision and the light was fading fast, I needed some height to catch the last rays of sunlight. Typically when driving to Cefn Bryn, the clouds swept in on the wind and any chance of an interesting sunset was gone. I thought I would have a walk anyway and see what I could find to photograph.
I made the image above on my way back to the truck. It was very low light, so I focused manually on the hyperfocal distance and then held the shutter open for 3 minutes. Even at three minutes the image was a bit underexposed, but luckily RAW file are quite forgiving. There is some increased noise in the image, but I think it helps the lowlight look overall. As the sky was brighter I still needed to use an ND graduated filter to bring it closer to the ground exposure. The wind blurred the clouds nicely as the moved across the sky at some speed, but some colours that I don’t remember seeing with the naked eye came out as well.
The ponds on Cefn Bryn are always on interest to me. Their water level varies depending on the recent weather, but normally some water is present through out the year. I think I am still searching for the definitive image of the ponds, but the images above and below are my latest attempts. As it was quite dark, originally the image above?was very blue, but using a present in Lightroom corrected that and brought the image closer to what I thought I saw with the naked eye. The image below needed more contrast than the RAW file initially gave me and it helped to make the grass stems separate more from the waters surface. The way the grass pokes through the water and rests on the surface always gets my attention, but I think my attempts need more work still.
