Ferns

Something arty for the blog tonight.  Back in the summer, Amy ended up acquiring through work some light-sensitive paper which was otherwise nearing the end of its useful life, and decided to have a play with it during the summer hols.  It can basically be summed up as- put the paper in sunlight with something over the top of it to create a silhouette, time it carefully, then fix it by soaking it in water.

With plenty of fern leaves lying around near where we were staying (apparently uprooted by the gardeners), it seemed logical to use one of these as it would give an interesting silhouette.

Further experiments with line drawings from her sketchpad, copied onto acetate.

And finally something more abstract, using a repeated pattern of her origami bird designs in dark blue.

Snowdon

Back in the summer, we decided to climb Snowdon, as the Foster Childs hadn't done a mountain yet, and we hadn't climbed it in about four years.  We had the new camera too now, and some nice panoramic shots from the summit would be a possibility, so (in a week of bad weather) we picked the day where the clouds were forecast to clear by 10am, hit the car park at half 6, and started up the mountain...

By 9.45am, we realised the clouds were not going to clear...  Still, onward and upward.

The clouds might have stifled the intention for landscape shooting, but we did manage some transport shots on the Mountain Railway in the slightly spooky atmosphere.

Given the Summit Café was like Piccadilly Circus, we stayed only as long as it took to warm back up a bit with a brew, then headed back down...

Dropping back down out of the clouds...

The paths got a bit quieter on the way back down to the Miners Track.

Even by mid afternoon, the cloud hadn't moved off the summit...

Well, it wasn't quite the day we'd hoped, and the lighting wasn't terrific for landscape photography, but the shots of the trains in the clouds were alright, and more importantly, we had a day of healthy exercise up there.  Will have to go back another day in better weather...

Welsh Highland Railway, Glaslyn and Pont Croeser

Wales in the summer for this update, some railway and landscape pics around the Welsh Highland Railway...

The locomotives of the Welsh Highland Railway are impressive mechanically, but don't necessarily look that photogenic due to their design.  Still, I (Ben) haven't managed that many train pics this summer so thought it worth trying to get a few pics.

Down by the Glaslyn at Pont Croeser.  Interestingly I found some old photographs I'd taken from about ten years back, before the railway had been rebuilt here, so I might try to do some now/then stuff in a future blog.

Further up the Glaslyn, I got some more pics around Aberglaslyn and the pass near Beddgelert.

Not too bad, but I do prefer photographing trains on the Ffestiniog, where the locomotives are a little more on the interesting/eccentric side, so some pics from that line will appear in a future update.

Criccieth in August

With last week featuring some underwater shots taken at Criccieth, a little update today with some pics taken on the beach before we went in the water. 

The receding waves created some interesting effects on the beach...

The sky cleared nicely after a bit, and we were able to get some reasonable wave shots.

Underwater 2017

More experimentation with my (Amy's) underwater series.  As a birthday present, I got a new Underwater Compact, so I returned to some old locations to try it out.

The Glaslyn was running nice and clear up at Beddgelert.

For some reason, further along the gorge, the water had a slightly strange colour tint going on.

Oddly the camera was coping less well at the coast at Criccieth, possibly because of the unobstructed landscape meaning too much light was hitting the camera.  Some playing with the settings sorted it out though, but it took some experimenting.

The sea however was rather grotty; a combination of rough on-shore weather, and a lot of debris on the beach, meant it was cloudy.  Also, there was a lot of litter floating around, and it couldn't be a coincidence that it was a bank holiday weekend...

It seemed to cope well with wave shots, though with only two focal settings and a myriad of exposure options it took some time to get what I wanted with it.  But it looks like it will come in useful for a 'proper' project next spring.