Craig y Nos

You aren’t allowed to fly a drone in Craig y Nos Country Park in the foothills of the Brecon Beacons.  But the views there are spectacular enough anyway.  A viewing platform affords a lovely view over the lake and beyond to the first peaks of the southern Beacons.

I got this image on a crisp, cold January morning a couple of weeks ago.  I went in the hope there’d be mist rising off the lake, but it just wasn’t to be.  Anyway, I’m used to bad luck these days.

So, I tethered Dexter to a post nearby, set up my camera with a 3-stop graduated filter to balance the exposure between land and sky and framed this composition.  I could have used a further filter to slow the exposure down and capture more reflections on the lake  But this would have meant losing any details in the clouds as they were blowing by quite quickly, and I wanted to keep those.

I’m going to try to get back very early one morning, in the hope of capturing that elusive mist and flying the drone before anyone is there.  I’m well overdue a change in fortune.

Nikon D800, Nikkor 24-85mm f3.5-4.5 lens at 24mm

1/13^th of a second at f11, ISO 100

tripod, remote release

post script:

I wrote this before my disastrous trip when I "lost" my D800.  This, sadly, is the last image I ever took with it before it met its watery death.