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The life of a hill farmer in Snowdonia, North Wales, can be pretty harsh, especially when the 'beast from the east' weather system arrives from Siberia in what's supposed to be spring and dumps a load of snow and ice over the landscape.
But what's tricky for farmers was absolutely fantastic for outdoor photographers like me, with the already dramatic mountainous scenery further enhanced by the wild weather.
So as soon as the roads were passable my wife Liz and I headed for the mountains to enjoy the magnificent views and hopefully capture a few meaningful photographs on the way.
One spot where there is an abundance of scenery is the area around Llyn Ogwen and the Nant Ffrancon Valley, and this particular image was taken about 1/3rd of the way down the valley from the Ogwen visitors centre, looking back towards the head of the valley, with its woods and waterfall, to the snow capped peaks of Tryfan and the Glyderau mountains.
I chose this spot to capture the scene from in order to include the solitary stunted tree and isolated farm buildings as foreground interest, showing the insignificance of man set against the majesty and power of nature.
As I said at the beginning - it's a hard life being a hill farmer in Snowdonia, but at least you get to see this beauty every day.
Filename - nant ffrancon 10.jpg
Camera - Canon 6D
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 32mm
Exposure - Various @ f11, ISO100
Filters - None.
Location - Nant Ffrancon, Snowdonia, North Wales
This image - 533x800px JPEG
Conversion - Adobe Lightroom
Comments - 5 off exposures at 1 stop apart used to create HDR blend in Adobe Lightroom.
All content copyright © Howard Litherland 2009-2018 unless otherwise stated.