Pen-y-Fan and Corn Du

They say that the biggest skies are to be found in Arizona.

Well, I disagree.  I went out for a drive last month into the Brecon Beacons and onto my favourite road between the Swansea Valley and Trecastle.  At the top of that road there is a pull in which affords a superb view over to the highest peaks in the Beacons: Pen-y-Fan and Corn Du.

But it wasn’t the view that stopped me in my tracks.  It was the sky.  It was absolutely superb.  Enough to rival anything Arizona has I’d wager!

I exposed the image for the land, so had to use a 3-stop graduated filter to control the sky and stop the highlights in the clouds from burning out.  It was also the first outing for my Samyang 12mm f2.0 lens.  I bought this manual focus lens to take pictures of the stars, but it gave an excellent result here I think.  The relatively fast shutter speed (I wanted to freeze the motion of the fast-moving clouds) necessitated an aperture of f5.6, but I’m happy with the sharpness throughout the frame.

Fujifilm X-T2, Samyang 12mm f2.0

1/125^th of a second at f5.6, ISO 200

tripod, self-timer

I know I constantly harp on about being lucky living where I do, but this scene really rams home the fact that I'm glad I never moved away.