Last light to sunset

Evenings can often produce the best shots

Hike up for the views

Many Nikon DSLRs come with touch screens, and they aren’t just for accessing the menu or reviewing your images, they make shooting with Live View much easier as well – even when perched on a rocky outcrop up a mountain, as we were for the valley scene on the right. Shooting using the Nikon D850, we could simply tap different areas on the LCD to take separate shots that exposed for the shadows, midtones and highlights. We then blended the three images in Photoshop, using layers to reveal a full range of tones in a more natural (non-HDR) way.

The right light

Landscape photography is about the best light. We took nice enough photos all day, in a mixture of lighting conditions. However, early morning sunrises and late evening sunsets are the best because they produce softer, more colourful light with longer shadows, to give landscapes extra depth and dimension. We had envisaged shooting Dolbadarn castle across Llyn Peris, lit by the setting sun, but this scene failed to materialize. Luckily, a fellow photographer told us of a picturesque tree growing out of Llyn Padarn, further down the valley, so we captured it in the moody blue of dusk (far right).

Climbing the Pyg track to Snowdon’s summit, we took three exposures down the valley to Llanberis, then blended them