Wednesday 16 May 2018

Stwlan Dam Snowdonia April 9 th 2018

Today i have decided to go to Tanygrisiau, which is near Blaenau Festiniog to walk up into the mountains to Stwlan Dam . it looks a fabulous area to take aerial images with the drone.
The weather is looking very good this morning with blue sky and mixed cloud ,but clouding over in the early afternoon , So need to get up to the Dam early morning.
Arriving in Tanygrisiau and managing to find the small car parking area i had previously marked on the map  , i can see another parking area over near a set of waterfalls.  That would have been a little closer but never mind, its a nice day to go walking anyhow.

                                   Look at that view!    the dam is up there somewhere.



 Waterfalls near the other car parking area , Cwmorthin quarry is up there, a destination for later this afternoon.




 The tarmac road goes all the way up to the dam, and no traffic to worry about either , its a steady climb all the way up to the steeper zig zags by the look of it.




 I have stopped to take this image down through to Tanygrisiau reservoir , it looks like it would have had a track to bring rock /ore down to the railway track down by the reservoir from the old mine workings.




 At last i can see the Dam nestled in the mountainside , still a long hike up the zig zag road now.




 Having climbed up to near the top of the dam , i have set up the phantom 4 pro drone and taken off.
 Its a bit breezy but apart from that, the clouds and blue sky are going to look great in the images.





  First image ,single frame of a panorama set that didn't really look right , But this single looked good. 
                         I am shooting at 100 iso and f5.6 seems to be sharpest on this camera.



         A 9 image panorama , shot automatically with the drone.  The individual frames have been stitched in PTGui sticher program , after several tests i have noticed that Lightroom panorama stitcher loses significant of detail when comparing to the identical image merged in this program.


                     Looking down on part of the dam , strange how they have painted each end !





 Flying over to the far side of the mountain, its still easy to keep the drone in sight against the beautifull blue sky.

       This is a 180 degree 21 frame panorama merge.   This is my favourite image of the day.




                                                              Six frame vertorama.
                                             The light is starting to look a bit flat now!




 Thick cloud is building and approaching fairly quickly , i need to start walking back down now if i want to go up to Llyn Cwmorthin, which is a lake in the next valley over behind the waterfalls i passed earlier.




                                      Superb views down to Tanygrisiau over to the left.









                    Arrived at the waterfalls , this image looking back to where i have just been.
                                 This is the way up to the old quarry buildings i want to see.





 Look at all the slate !     One of the old ruined buildings is just in view , unfortunately the clouds have beaten me , this is no good for taking images.




 A few glimpses of blue sky but the sun is now covered by thick cloud that seems to have almost stopped moving!!!!!




 I have decided to sit and wait to see if i can get any sun breaking through before flying , but only have one battery left so will have the one chance.




      Yay!  sun     quickly into the air with the drone and manage to get this 3 frame hdr image with the sun lighting up the mountainside....




           That didn't last long!  couple of minutes and its gone, replaced with yet more clouds.
                                                                   9 frame panorama.



                                                  Topdown over the old mine buildings.




 Looking down the lake , with the fingers of rock leading out into the reservoir , that will look good looking straight down over them.




 6 frames taken topdown, moving the drone sideways to cover the entire area, each image is overlapped by about 25-30% to allow the stitcher to merge properly.




 That's it for today , no more drone batteries left and it now decides to brighten up!!!!!  





                       Passing some interesting slate structures on the way back down to the car.





                                                 Almost back at the car ,  one last image.




                        The end of a great morning in the stunning Snowdonia mountains.

No comments:

Post a Comment