Dan Santillo Photography

Bracelet Bay

Dan Santillo — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:45:18 +0000

Last weekend, I took the family to Bracelet Bay to have a play on the beach – it was absolutely freezing and, contrary to the Met Office forecast who said clear skies, it was rather cloudy. However, the sky look stunning especially for mid-morning. I had my camera with me, of course, and took a few photos.

Bracelet Bay, Mumbles

Weather Forecasts

Dan Santillo — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:55:28 +0000

As a photographer, I need to have a good idea of what the weather will be like tomorrow or even over the next few hours. The Met Office are the government funded weather forecaster, so it would seem sensible to use them. However, I’ve noticed on several occasions that I check the weather at 6am and make a decision on what to do that day only to find out that the forecast has changed by 7am. On one day when I was at home, I decided to keep a record of what the forecasts were doing – they are updated every hour.

The Met Office's ever changing forecast

The left hand column with 6am, 7am, etc. is the time at which the forecast was updated. The row across the top is the time at which the weather was supposed to be doing what was forecast. I shall use the forecast for 12pm as an example. At 6am, midday was forecast to be thick cloud. At 7am, midday was forecast to be medium level cloud, and so on. Over the 6 hours leading up to midday, the forecast changed no less than 4 times! I shall let you draw your own conclusions to all that, but it certainly makes my job very, very difficult and costs me a lot in wasted fuel for journeys when the forecast says one thing and the reality is something completely different.

The Met Office also have a detailed mountain forecast which, I believe, is subsidised by the Welsh Assembly. Before a recent trip out, I checked this forecast, which told me “Hill fog: None” and also that the visibility would be “moderate to good”, which I read as hazy conditions. It also said hill fog would become persistent later in the day. To me, that seems like ideal conditions for some photos during the morning. I was rather surprised when I drove for an hour and walked to the summit of Pen y Fan to spend most of my time in the fog from 8:30 in the morning. I mentioned this on Twitter – here is the conversation in it’s entirety:

Me: Met Office mountain forecast wrong again. Am now in thick cloud in the Brecons. Another wasted trip @metoffice
Met Office: We did state there would be cloud and vis would be moderate to poor
The link they sent me was to their mountain forecast that explicitly said visibility would be moderate to good
Me: Actually, your forecast says “Visibility moderate or good” and “hill fog: None at first.” not mod to poor according to your link.
Met Office: It says “Moderate or good, becoming locally poor later. Very poor in hill fog”
Note that they’ve just changed their mind on what their forecast says
Me: Yep it says “Very poor in hill fog” also “Hill fog: None at first. Persistent … by early afternoon”. I was there at 8:30am. :-)

What annoyed me in particular wasn’t that the forecast was wrong, but that they refused to admit it. It might seem like I’m being petty here, but this cost me 65 miles in diesel (£29.24 at the HMRC business rate of 45p per mile) and around 4 hours of not being at my desk and potentially earning money by writing magazine articles, keywording images, etc.

When I started freelancing in 2005, I used the forecast regularly and 9 times out of 10 it would be accurate and I would be in the weather I wanted to be. Something seems to have changed recently, maybe after they spent £33m on a new super computer (that’s what I’ve read anyway), and now their forecasts change hourly – sometimes dramatically from sunny spells to heavy rain and back again. It isn’t just me who has noticed this – several fellow photographers have had wasted and costly trips out. I’m not a forecaster and I don’t know what’s going on, but I do know that this is costing me a fortune in wasted diesel and time.

Mynydd Illtud at Night

Dan Santillo — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 10:55:12 +0000

When I first shot some star trails, the interest was negligible. After a year or so, people started to take an interest and my one photo of star trails in the Brecon Beacons started to sell really well. To get the more effective star trails, the moon mustn’t be in the sky so there are less than two weeks out of every four when star trails are possible. Adding in the weather factor makes it even more difficult to get the right conditions. The Met Office forecast was for clear skies last night, so I headed out to Mynydd Illtud for sunset, but unfortunately the peaks were shrouded in cloud. Nevertheless, I decided to give it a go. I waited until it was partially dark and then set up my camera in the chosen position whilst I could still see well enough to set everything up. I then took a photo to use as a base image so there was detail in the foreground and sky. Once that was done, I had to wait until it was dark before taking the star photos. I set my timer to take one minute photos and left it for about an hour.

Mynydd Illtud at Night

I then had to turn 57 photos into one. I used Star Trails software to stack all the photos and then did the final processing in Photoshop. It was pretty cold last night on the hill – on my top, I was wearing a thermal top, a base layer, two micro fleeces, a thick woolly jumper, a soft shell and, finally, a waterproof/windproof coat. It worked well keeping the cold off!

Here is the more traditional sunset photo, although unfortunately the peaks were in the cloud.

Mynydd Illtud

Pen y Fan Massif

Dan Santillo — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:45:55 +0000

With the forecast saying valley mist, I decided to walk to the ridge by Corn Du for sunrise. I started walking from the Storey Arms at 6:30am and arrived on the ridge at 7:30am. Sunrise itself wasn’t anything special, but I stayed on the ridge for 2.5 hours to see how the weather would pan out. During that time, a hundred or so army personnel were walking to Pen y Fan, presumably doing the dreaded ‘Fan Dance’. I set up the camera for a panorama shot and framed it so I could get the peaks in as well as Upper Neuadd Reservoir, and anyone who knows this area will know that it’s far wider than the eye can see! Every so often, clouds would build on the peaks and blow away again. This is the best of the 6 or so I shot.

Pen y Fan Massif (Corn Du, Pen y Fan, Cribyn, Fan y Big) and Upper Neuadd Reservoir

A Visit to the Beach – at 886m Above Sea Level

Dan Santillo — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 15:14:50 +0000

I went for a walk to the summit of Pen y Fan this morning (it was in thick cloud despite the weather forecast, but that’s another story). I could some sunrise colour just after I started up the hill, which I duly photographed:

Fan Fawr, Brecon Beacons National Park

I had seen the summits were in cloud already, but decided to walk up there anyway for the exercise. On the summit, I had a coffee and some food before photographing the rocks. If you’ve ever been to the summit of Pen y Fan, you might have noticed rocks with patterns in them. The reason for this is sand – Pen y Fan is formed from Old Red Sandstone. These ripples in the sandstone were formed by the motion of the water over the sand, which means that millions of years ago the summit of Pen y Fan was once at the bottom of the sea!

The beach on Pen y Fan, Brecon Beacons National Park

Nadolig Llawen and a Happy New Year

Dan Santillo — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 06:27:23 +0000

This will, most probably, be my last blog post of 2011 so it’s time to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! This year has been very successful for me and I’ve managed to expand my photography business despite the gloomy economic outlook, although if the news articles are anything to go by, 2012 will be even worse… I have a lot planned for 2012, filling the first three months with a lot of new photography before my craft fairs and exhibitions start again for the year. Perhaps the biggest news is that I shall be starting photography tutoring, starting off with small groups and one-to-ones – this is something I’ve been asked about several times which has caused me to think seriously about it. To start with I shall be running a trial or two and see how I go from there, so look out for an announcement in the first couple of months next year – the first one or two will be run free to help me get a feel for it and also to get valuable feedback before deciding to proceed with it.

Here is a photo I took a long time ago in the Brecons – I parked at Blaen-y-glyn and whilst putting my boots on, this robin came to say hello. I had real trouble trying to photograph it as it kept coming too close, even flying in and out of the car! It is my most seasonal photo to date!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

A quick trip to the Brecons

Dan Santillo — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 06:32:15 +0000

This time of year is always my busiest, with exhibitions and craft fairs, etc. so I don’t often get to go out as much as I’d like. But with snow in the air, I took a morning to go out to the Brecons – mainly to try out my winter tyres in the snow! I will talk more about the winter tyres later in the season, but I was very impressed at the grip and it means normal driving is possible on snow and ice. I did get out of the car and walk for a little bit – this is the photo I took:

Talybont Forest and Craig y Dan Ddu

I have a lot of trips planned for early next year, so standby for a flood of new work :-)

Nash Point Micro Landscapes

Dan Santillo — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 18:25:37 +0000

My parents are visiting for a few days and, as seems to be the case all too often, the weather isn’t very nice. We decided to take a trip to Nash Point on the Glamorgan Heritage Coast as I’ve only been there once and my parents haven’t been there at all – and this time, the tide was out. It was immediately obvious that it wasn’t the weather for landscapes:

Nash Point, Glamorgan Heritage Coast

As I was wondering around, I noticed that rocks were caught in crevices and pools and decided to forget the traditional landscapes and to concentrate of the micro landscapes. I haven’t moved any rocks or anything else in these photos – they are exactly as I found them.

Nash Point, Glamorgan Heritage Coast

This one, I thought looked rather like an eye

Nash Point, Glamorgan Heritage Coast

Usk Reservoir

Dan Santillo — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 14:12:59 +0000

Day 2 of my car being serviced and repaired at the garage so I borrowed my wife’s car and drove out to the hills west of Usk Reservoir. On my way to the slight hill overlooking the reservoir, a rather old and gnarled fence post caught me eye.

Fence in the Brecons

As a slight aside, it may interest you to know that this is a “Worm’s Eye” image – the tripod legs were splayed out on the ground to emphasis the fence and get it to break the horizon. Here are some comparison shots:

Left: Tripod at full height; Right: Tripod at half height

I left the fence and crossed boggy ground to get to a slight rise that looked down onto Usk Reservoir. I set the camera up, held onto the tripod to stop it being blown over and waited for a brief patch of sun.

Usk Reservoir

And with that, my time was up and I had to get Paula’s car back to her so she could go to work.

Stormy Brecons

Dan Santillo — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 17:15:28 +0000

Having been out of action for a week or so with a mild chest infection, I decided it was high time I went out to the Brecons. The forecast was for heavy rain showers in the morning and clearing from midday with snow on the peaks. Perfect as I wanted to get a stormy shot or two! I parked near Upper Neuadd Reservoir and walked up the Gap Road where I wanted to shoot a panorama. I set the camera up just as the clouds darkened behind Pen y Fan:

Corn Du, Pen y Fan and Cribyn

Then I attempted the panorama:

Corn Du, Pen y Fan and Cribyn

Before I started moving again, I also shot a self portrait:

Walking the Gap Road

I had spent about 30 minutes in that one spot so headed along the road again so climb Fan y Big where I wanted to get a shot of the Diving Board. It was a long slog up the Gap Road to the base of Fan y Big, but the climb itself to the top was fairly easy. I set the camera up and used the 10 second timer so I could run out onto the Diving Board.

The Fan y Big Diving Board

The weather had been perfect all morning so I sat down for lunch by the shelter on Fan y Big – then it started to rain and hail so I quickly put my waterproofs on and walked to the next location I wanted to shoot from. It had stopped precipitating by the time I got there, but it was still pretty moody!

Corn Du, Pen y Fan and Cribyn

It started to rain again so I started to pack the camera gear away when suddenly a rainbow appeared! I managed to grab this photo before it disappeared:

Fan y Big rainbow

The hail then got too much so I decided to call it a day and walked back to the car, feeling hopeful I had some shots I was happy with. When I loaded them on to the computer, I was very pleased with the day’s work!