Sunday, 6 November 2016

Llechwedd Slate Caverns; Going Underground...


Meant to put this up a while ago, but lost the memory card… whoops.  Anyway, tonight on the blog we have a trip to the Llechwedd Slate Caverns; this location turned out to be a very handy bolt-hole when it was raining (see above, snapped en-route), and somewhere neither of us have been since childhood.  It also could do with a few more vowels in the name, but that's just my opinion.


Llechwedd Slate Caverns are a former slate quarry, in fact one of the biggest in North Wales, it has undergone something of a renaissance of late amongst the adventurer-set, what with its zip lines, army-lorry tours, and such.  But what we both remember it for was the underground tours, which were always terrific and not a little frightening when you’re five.


With the rain belting down fit to flood the planet, we descended underground for the tour.  The pictures which resulted were purely experimental; neither of us have tried shooting pics underground really (certainly not freehand, but then carrying a tripod around down there would have been a bit risky, not to mention an inconvenience for the rest of the tour group).  They're also really ust photography as a reflex action; it was too wet to take pictures up on the surface, and we were just wanting to take photographs of something, anything...




Got a bit bored of trying to balance the camera on piles of stone, so started some motion blurring shots just for the sake of it...


The underground lake was nicely lit anyway, so a few different colours for the shots anyway...







Not a camera effect, but part of the sound and light effects of the show there.  OK so I know the shots are not brilliant, but making the best of the lack of opportunities given the weather.

These shots, taken of the waterfall up top near the entrance, give some clue as to the quantitiy of rain which was hammering down, not to mention the misting-up it was causing on the lens…

…as do these later shots taken near Porthmadog, of the River Glaslyn.



Later that night, for the sake of something to photograph, it was back out to the waterfalls near where we were staying, and some experiments with long exposures, and coloured torches...


Right... I think that is us all caught up.  Some more recent updates (who am I kidding, a LOT of recent updates; we've done a lot of photography the last two weeks) coming soon.




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