Fairy Glen is a gorge just south of Betws-Y-Coed along Afon (river) Conwy. It was a lovely walk above and along the river and dappled sunlight played on the moss-covered vertical mountain walls in the glen that made me imagine the fairies living here. Coming from Sweden, I could also see the trolls roaming around at the far end of the gorge.
But I have to admit that the original pictures of the glen looked quite far from the end result. To get the dreamy feeling, I had to use a long exposure that calmed the river. The difference between the lightest and darkest parts of the gorge were quite extreme, and to prevent the dark parts from being completely black and the brigher parts from being blown out, I added several photos with different exposure together (HDR). I made the water cooler (more blue) and warmed up parts of the moss with more yellow. And to lead the eye into the gorge I emphasised the white streaks in the water bringing our eyes from the foreground stone and travelling up into the glen.
This is how I saw it, when Jennifer and I arrived. And this is also what my photos document. But I have to admit that it isn’t exactly as my iPhone would have captured it!
It was very precarious to walk on the slippery stones in the river to get out into the middle, which was necessary to capture the opening into the gorge. I slipped a couple of times and had bruises on my leg for weeks afterwards, and I wouldn’t have done it without help from Jennifer with camera equipment and tripod on the slippery stones. The image below is looking in the other direction, downstream from where I was based for my previous photos.
We parked the car a mile or so away from the glen and while I prepared the camera backpack, we got a curious robin visiting us. Robins are naturally inquisitive and often drawn to human activity. This little one started by sitting on our car’s side mirror but moved on to my camera bag and finished his visit by observing us from the roof or our car.
