Families, Flu and Extreme Photography – Part 2

Welcome back to my crazy holiday in Wales. By Saturday, the snow had really set in. These are my adventures from that point onwards.

Saturday

On Saturday morning, we all decided to get the bus into Betws-y-Coed, so that Nain (the Welsh word for Nana) could take my little boy to the Railway Museum and to Cotswold to buy him some presents.

The snow in Cwm had toned down slightly, but as we trundled along the A5 on the bus, the swirls picked up again, and Betws was quite a picture.

This shot was from the Vivitar PZ480, proving its worth as quite a useful snapshot camera, it has handled the exposure of this snowy day really well.

My partner was feeling poorly, and my son was grumpy and confused, so this day didn’t really produce much more in terms of photography, and in the evening we retired back to lounge about in the cottage.

Sunday

Sunday I managed to get out for another reasonably decent shoot. I decided to try at least some of a walk that I had planned before leaving, up to the end of the valley to Craig Blaen-y-Cwm and the Twll-y-Cwm waterfall, the source of the Machno River.

This is a moderately easy stroll under normal conditions, a little over a mile with relatively clear tracks. After the last two days of snow the tracks had faded under 18 inch drifts and the landscape was fairly alien. Still, I managed some fairly awesome shots. I used the Sigma 10-20mm (with my finger firmly on the manual focus override) and a ND4 graduated Filter to tame the white skies, though I have needed to use a levels layer on these still to retain some minimal detail in the shots.

Sunday afternoon, we all went out for a walk to take my son out in the snow to the play park. This was made slightly interesting by the fact that one of his wellies had managed to go AWOL in Betws-Y-Coed. But with the aid of some plastic bags and his older shoes, along with the smart new snow-suit that Nain had bought him, we got there.

I took this lovely evocative shot using the Vivitar PZ480.

I also got this great shot of a Landrover 101 Forward Control with the Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim.

Monday

Monday was still snowy and more had fallen in the night. But it turned out a pretty good day, for photography at least.

I managed a couple of interesting images out the back of the house for a start.

We decided to go into Betws-Y-Coed again and I got off the bus early by Conwy Falls, to have a walk and a chance for some more photography. My aim was to get to Fairy Glen, but I didn’t really consider that although the gorge is half way back to Conwy Falls from Betwys-Y-Coed there’s no real way to get to it without being nearly in Betws.. So I wasted quite a lot of time, nice though the walk in the snow was.

Consequently I was being bugged to come back to Betwys before I had got properly into the gorge, but I did take some interesting, if rather busy, shots round near where the Afon Lledr meets the Conwy.

I got the chance for a couple of railway shots, the suspension bridge over the Conwy, and the falls at Pont-Y-Pair bridge over the Llugwy while we were in Betws.

Back in Cwm Penmachno again I went out an played with some colour filters to end the day. These are obviously not to everyones taste, but my driving force is a bit of experimentation!

So there you go. This was all in all quite epic, extremely stressful, but moderately successful, though I entirely failed to reach the two places I hoped to.

One thing I have not mentioned, I shot a number of images on Slide film while in wales, the weather failing to allow me to try IR film of the old quarries. I’ll post that later.