Glaslyn Pass

Back in the summer, we managed another trip to the Glaslyn Pass in north Wales, though as with most of our photography over the summer, it was marred somewhat by poor weather which made for challenging lighting conditions.  We were mainly there to get some transport and underwater pics, so just snapped a few landscape shots along the way.

With the landscapes somewhat ruined by that lighting, we instead tried a few shots of the local wildlife, including a large number of butterflies which were basking on the bushes near the top of the pass.

We'll be posting some slightly more abstract close-up pics from the pass in a bit, using some new lenses we picked up over the summer...

Llanberis, again

Back to Wales for this blog post, and some shots taken around Llanberis late in the summer.  We did the (by now very traditional) trip to the Slate Museum and then walk up to the castle; slightly running out of shots to take there these days, as its a location we visit a lot, but generally in less than pleasant weather (as it is the sort of venue we go to when it is raining).

The path up to the castle has a few interesting bits of metalwork around, including what looks like old rail re purposed from the quarries.

A few train pictures from around the Slate Museum...

...and Llanberis Lake Railway.  There was definitely an interesting contrast in the weather depending on where you were standing that day.

Paint Swirls

Just a quick little post today... found some old pics taken whilst mixing paint for a project in the last job.  Something nicely abstract about them anyway, especially with different lighting (depending on if the cargo door was open or not).

Basically, we're buried in the edit for some photos shot over the weekend, so when that's done we'll have something a little more entertaining for the blog.  In the meantime, have a look at literally some paint drying...

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.