Cwm Orthin. Gwynedd.
16th March 2007
By the time we reached the valley of Cwm Orthin, I was very glad I’d experimented with the infrared filter at Talacre. The light was failing fast as cloud was blowing in and I had just enough time for a couple of exposures one with and one without filtration before the last of the sunlight disappeared.
Using IR film in the past, I had tended towards over exposure and a lot of careful work in the darkroom to create images in which the infrared effect served to give detail in areas which were difficult to render by visible light alone.
These two frames have been combined to create the image you see above and this combination of visible and infrared light is the effect I had been hoping to get.
The cloudy conditions that were to last the rest of the day are what many landscape photographers would describe as “bad light”, which is a little unfair.
Certainly it lacks the drama that is good for sweeping vistas and landscape in the traditional sense but a studio photographer would recognise it as “good light” for a variety of other, smaller subjects.
So it was that I started looking at more detailed shots and particularly in the streams and torrents that tumble down the hillsides here.
Using a neutral density filter increased the exposure time sufficiently to contrast the flowing liquid with the slowly eroding rock forms.
It’s easy to think of water as soft and gentle but over time even stone cannot resist it’s power.
