Sometimes the best photographs are the ones you weren’t planning to take.
I’d finished a photography job and was travelling home through North Wales when I decided to stop in Llanrwst for a cup of tea. I wasn’t looking for another photograph. The working day was finished and the camera could quite easily have stayed packed away.
Then I saw this.
Autumn colours in Llanrwst
The first thing that caught my attention was the incredible Virginia creeper covering the building. At this time of year it had turned a beautiful deep red, standing out against the greens, yellows and browns of the surrounding trees.
Add the stone bridge, dark water and slightly dramatic Welsh sky and I knew I had to get the camera back out.
This is one of the things I love about autumn photography in North Wales. The landscape can change enormously within a few weeks. Places you might have driven past throughout the summer suddenly look completely different when the autumn colours arrive.
Photography without a brief
Most of my working week is spent photographing people and businesses. As a professional photographer, there is normally a purpose behind every photograph I create. There’s a client, a brief and a particular result we’re trying to achieve.
Photography like this is different.
There was no client. No brief. No shot list. Nobody waiting for the finished image.
I simply saw something that caught my eye and wanted to photograph it.
I think it’s important for professional photographers to occasionally do that. It takes you back to one of the reasons many of us picked up a camera in the first place: because we noticed something and wanted to capture it.
Photographing North Wales
I’m incredibly fortunate to work as a photographer across North Wales, Cheshire, Chester and the surrounding areas, and travelling to photography jobs means I regularly find myself passing through some beautiful places.
Llanrwst is certainly one of them.
It would have been very easy to have my cup of tea, get back in the car and continue home. Instead, I stopped for a few minutes longer and made this photograph.
Sometimes the photograph you weren’t planning to take is the one you’re most pleased you stopped for.
Ray Jones
Professional Photographer covering North Wales, Cheshire and Chester
