Llyn Cwm Bychan

There’s something very special about Llyn Cwm Bychan. Its isolation (the lake is reachable via a tortuously narrow and winding road) seems to be a deterrent for those tourists who flock to better-known and more accessible locations: we were almost alone when we visited the lake in October. It is their loss. Although small, the lake is extremely picturesque, as is the surrounding countryside of soft-grassed pasture, woodland and steeply rising hills. Llyn Cwm Bychan is a little Eden.

We had hoped for more detail in the sky – in photography a relentlessly blue sky is as disheartening as a sky that’s relentlessly grey. But with such light on the foreground features and on the distant hills, and with such untroubled reflections in the lake’s still water, the sky’s refusal to cooperate was easily forgiven.

Canon EOS 5D and EF 16-35mm lens.

Exposure of 2 seconds at f/22.