Hi All,
On 1st January 2015 I set myself a project: document the changing seasons on the top of Plynlimon, a mountain local to me in the Cambrian range in mid-Wales.
I thought I’d try doing a video 360 degree panorama every month through the year. It sorta ballooned into a 12-month video diary come visual poem about the mountain.
If you have 20 minutes and feel like a bit of a chill-out and relax, please take a look and let me know what you think:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lceUIPvaDVs
I started with a wobbly mini plastic tripod on top of the trig point; by the end of the year I was hauling the biggest tripod Gitzo would sell me plus a fluid head plus a motorized pan platform up the damn mountain to get some decent footage. Turns out Plynlimon is WINDY and that’s why the footage is a bit shaky at the start! I know it is a little slow to get started too- I wanted to keep the purity of the 360 panorama concept for January, and besides I didn’t have any other footage from that month and didn’t want to cheat.
I know it is not BBC Nature Department quality but I had a lot of fun shooting it, including a few summer nights spent camping out at the top with the whole mountain to myself. Heaven! 🙂
I could upload a higher-quality version here for RE members rather than living with the YouTube compression, let me know if you’d be interested.
Cheers, Hywel
I really enjoyed the video Plynlimon and would like to download the HD version if it becomes available. Thanks for it.
What a delightful video, in every respect. First you should be praised for just doing it. The physical challenge must have been formidable and one that, when the weather was, um, less than perfect, you refused to put off. But it’s more than overcoming weather, distance, etc. — the video shows the sublime beauty of what otherwise would be not much more than a small hill little known beyond its nearby residents. And that shows an artistic depth far beyond the mechanics of manipulating a camera.
Thanks for letting us see it.