A cloudy day in the Glyderau mountains

After reading an excellent weather forecast for today I thought I'd have a wander around the Glyderau mountains in Snowdonia and take the opportunity to get a little more use out of my new Lee NDgrads.

Despite it turning out to be a rather cloudy day the conditions produced occasional glints of dramtic lighting

Looks bleak and cold, as I guess it still is.Well executed shots, the first being my pick.

Looks like a good day in the Ogwen Valley to me, looks dry!

First is my favourite as well.
All good but the NDgrad is not at all obvious. Mind you I love the texture of the big rock in number 2.

I noticed some light coloured bits up hill from the far end of Ogwen, above Glan Dena. Do you know what they are? I walked past that point 2/3 weeks ago, coming down from Ffynnon Lloer and don't remember seeing them then.

It was pretty bleak...no rain Bob, just a couple of hail showers - nice for May

I'm glad the NDgrad isn't obvious as that's really what I'm going for, I think its easy to make shots look to unnatural if the grad effect is too heavy

The light coloured bits I'm not sure about unless it's the snow..there's still a few patches it about on the higher slopes

Thanks

Simon

Love the shots I like the third best love the composition and being portrait IMO gives it more drama.
I have some cheaper Cokin Ngrads but so far haven't got my head around how to use them properly. Its good to see what can be achieved

Warning- critique coming!

I like the shadow play in the first, and the comp in the third. The boulder in the second is a bit of a composition killer IMHO: a brick wall on the centre of the frame. Unfortunately, for me the nd grad is a tad too strong in the shots too. It looks quite obvious, especially where it darkens the peaks. Perhaps a softer weaker grad would have been slightly better, or just exploit the DR of the K5 and do it in PP where the effect can be applied with more finesse.

Lovely captures, like the second one a lot.

No problem, always happy with critique.

I agree with you about the boulder, I was really thinking of contrasts between foreground and Tryfan but it hasn't quite worked as I envisaged, perhaps I should have underexposed Tryfan to have more of a silhouette.

With the grads though I think they've worked pretty well and I don't really think that they are too obvious, they just add that bit more drama to the sky - I'm not really looking to do the work in PP either, always trying to improve my "in-camera" skills to reduce the amount of PP as I don't find it the most enjoyable part of photography, I personally get much more satisfaction from the in-field side of things too

Thanks for the detailed feedback though and definitely keep it coming, life would be pretty boring if we all agreed on everything

Thanks

Simon

Interesting set of which I like #2 best due to the nice contrasting light - although perhaps perversely I can also see Pentaxophile's point re composition - a step to the left to offset the peak and the boulder might have been even better.

Are these with the 2 stop hard grad and your 12-24???

Yes, 2 can definitely be improved...it's a new area I only discovered yesterday so I'll definitely be revisting a few times yet - I think there's loads of opportunities, I had to cut things short as the cloud cover became too heavy so still plenty to explore.

It was the 12-24 & 2 stop, shot 1 was the type of shot I bought the DA15mm for too but I'm a bit fussy with corner sharpness and it just wasn't as good as the 12-24 so I sold it, shame as I really liked the colour/contrast

.

Great shots, the first one makes me want to get out and follow that footpath.