3 Peaks Training - Eglwysilan

I wrote in my last posting that I had signed up for the Tenovus 3 Peaks Challenge which about 40 of us at work have signed up for. I'm one of un-fittest of the people who signed up so I've got a real challenge to get fit, and one of the things I'm doing is not stinting on getting up hills and talking camera equipment with me

Last time I wrote about a spectacular  walk in the Brecon Beacons, but I can't always afford the time to drive that far so today I  worked out a route from almost sea level to one of the highest local hills Eglwysilan Mountain

Starting from Upper Boat and heading right up to the summit I was afforded some fine views, and an opportunity to get the justaposition of wonderful landscapes and modern structures

Noormally like most landscape Photographers I'm going out of my way to get these type of things out of my pictures. But for once here they are

Phone lines going into Senghennydd

Power lines topping the skyline

And getting reflected in the pools

The Brecon Beacons in the distance 

After these pictures it bcame hazy and the sky went white which is the bane of all landscape photographs so I increased my speed and headed home

It is nice to be up here again though. I haven't been here since I was Working A Sunset

Another  6.5 miles and 1200 ft climbing for the training

Working a Sunset

Spring and autumn are sunsets time

My Mrs took me out last night to where she has her riding lessons. That side of the hill was in shadow, so I drove around to Eglwysilan where people from the Universal Colliery disaster are buried.

Round on that side of the hill I found a really hazy sunset looking out over the Taf Valley so I found a quiet corner to sit and enjoy it

The spot I really wanted was spoiled with a farmer working and kicking up a big dust cloud that I found too hard to work with so I headed further North.

At first the skies were quite light and there were some interesting variations and the sun was still fairly high so it wasn't in the pictiures

As the sun went further down it needed to come into the picture and the colours got more intense which made it harder to get any subtlety into the pictures, but the colours were really enjoyable

And finishing with some really intense reds

I have not adjusted the colours in these pictures, just increased the contrast with a very minor adjustment.

The trick to get the intensity of colours was to shoot into the light and let the camera decide to darken the sky.

These are all taken with the 50-200 handheld, but with the aid of a fencepost for stability