An Autumn Afternoon on Llanddwyn Island

On a blustery late October afternoon I took my good friend Gary Norman to visit Llanddwyn Island, Anglesey. It was his first time at this location.

I always enjoy visitors’ initial reactions to this iconic location. Especially from photographers, as they prepare their equipment and set about capturing this haunting and evocative location. No matter the weather conditions or tides, any landscape photographer will find themselves in their element here.

Completely coincidently, I have found myself at this location more than half a dozen times over the last few weeks. And on each occasion I have felt that I would rather use my stills camera than record the visit for my YouTube channel. When I concentrate more on photography, there is no denying that the results can be, perhaps, more satisfying. And on this occasion, particularly so.

I was able to spend a good deal of time concentrating on a single composition, timing my shots and exploiting the light to create an image with which I was sufficiently happy to add to my main homepage portfolio. Thereby making it one of the top 30 images I have ever captured – well, in my opinion, anyway!

It was necessary to scramble to the top of a huge rocky outcrop in order to ensure that this composition provided some separation between the subject outcrop and the horizon. We were gifted with some superb sunset light, but arranging the line of sight to place the sunbeams immediately behind the rock was quite a feat.

Approximately 50 exposures were gathered during the two hour session, this final artwork being a combination of 3 images.