Plynlimon 2015: a visual poem

[Hywel]

Hi,

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! :-)

Cheers, Hywel

Here are a few framegrabs:

[Richard Pearlman]

Other than the technical problems you mention in your post, I think that you did a phenomenal job. There are some amazing shots in that video. I do have 1 suggestion, though. I think that you could have cut the traveling shots. I assume they are there for the purpose of some kind of transition, but the constant changing of the camera position is jarring. Overall, I really like the work you did. Some more night shots would be awesome too.

[Leszek Piotrowski]

Thanks for sharing. Enjoyed the video of this high country depicted in the changing seasons.