Onegav

Happy World Photography Day!!!

Now, this year is my first year truly delving deeper into the world of photography, so I do not profess to know what world photography day is all about.

However, I found out it was today, on my way home after having probably my best day ever with my camera in my hands! Kind of fitting, I think you’ll agree.

Anyway, I’m rapidly running out of time today, and I don’t want to rush the photo edits (it’s taken me ages just to organise and blend today’s exposure bracketed shots, all 700 of them) so I will give you a full update, and loads of photographs tomorrow. However, to keep true to the 365 project, and to make sure I don’t break my so far clean sheet for the year; here is my take on the famous, “Lonely Tree”.

We had a superb family day out today, and I’ll let you all about it, with photographs too, tomorrow, but for now I think you can probably guess where we’ve been…..

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With a little more time, here is how yesterday unfolded……

We set out, for the second time, to visit Llanberis in North Wales. A stunning location that sits at the foot of Snowdon.

Our mission though, wasn’t to visit the famous mountain, but to go and visit a very humble little tree that perched on a ting rock at the edge of a big lake; The Lonely Tree.

There is a an irony in its name today, however, given that the tree was anything but lonely. People were all over the place, some came to see the tree, some came to swim, to canoe, to paddle board. Some came to paint and to walk, and some just came to breath in as much of the scenery as they could.

We stopped by the tree and ate our lunch, whilst taking some photographs. The girls played in the lake, paddling in the cool refreshing water. They really enjoyed it, as did we.

It’s the sort of place that takes your breath away on more than on occasion, and several times both Holly and I stopped and just exclaimed “it’s just stunning here”.

A chap was playing with his dog in the water, and I asked to photograph his dog which he said was no problem. Turns out he’s a photographer too, and he showed me some of his photographs taken at sunrise in November, they were incredible!

He also told us about a spot to park near to the castle, or what we thought was a castle at the end of the lake, so with an hour and a half left before we needed to head home, we set a course and headed off for the second half of our adventure.

Turns out it is a castle ruin, and the tower that remains is the prison, and I can only imagine the horror of being held there back in the days when it was in use.

It’s called Dolbadarn Castle, and if you want to read about is history, which is pretty interesting, have a look here: http://www.castlewales.com/dolbd.html

The girls really enjoyed exploring the castle ruins, and they could easily scale the tiny twisting stone stair case, where as I have to admit I struggled to squeeze around with my back pack on!

The views from the top, looking down the lake one way and towards Snowdon the other, were nothing short of stunning.

We watched the Lion Ling at the cinema this after noon, (3rd time for the girls, first for me, and it’s great by the way!) and one lyric in a song reminded me of yesterday, it went:

There’s far too much to take in here,
More to find than can ever be found

For me, that perfectly summed up how it felt yesterday in Llanberis, and more over, I think that describes the wonderful world we live in really well – how can we possibly stand still and not explore the world with every second we possibly can?

There is too much to see, so we’d best see as much as we can.

link to the full photo album (120 photos) : https://flic.kr/s/aHsmGk7EMj