A stunning Tryfan sunrise from Cwm Idwal in Eryri Snowdonia

There are some mornings in the mountains that make getting out of a warm bed at an unreasonable hour completely worthwhile. This was one of them.

I had made the early journey into Eryri, Snowdonia, with one thing in mind: to capture the first light of an autumn sunrise with the unmistakable silhouette of Tryfan rising above the landscape. The forecast had promised the possibility of clear skies, but as any landscape photographer knows, a forecast is never a guarantee. Sometimes the mountains decide what you're going to get.

Arriving in the darkness, the landscape was almost completely hidden. The only clues to what was waiting beyond my head torch were the faint outlines of the surrounding peaks and the occasional gap in the clouds. As I set up my camera, there was a real sense of anticipation. This is one of my favourite parts of landscape photography — standing in a dark landscape, knowing that within the next few minutes everything could change.

As dawn approached, the eastern horizon began to glow with a subtle orange and pink light. The autumn colours were still visible in the foreground, even in the low light, while Tryfan gradually emerged from the darkness. The combination of the warm autumn tones and the cool shadows of the mountain created exactly the kind of contrast I had hoped for.

For this image, I decided to shoot a panorama, carefully composing the frame to include Tryfan while retaining enough of the surrounding landscape to give the mountain a sense of scale. Shooting a panoramic image at sunrise can be challenging because the light changes incredibly quickly. Every second seems to bring a slightly different colour or intensity to the scene.

The dynamic range was also considerable. The sky around the rising sun was extremely bright, while the foreground and mountain were still sitting in deep shadow. Rather than trying to capture everything in a single exposure, I used exposure bracketing. By taking a series of exposures at different settings, I could preserve detail throughout the scene and give myself more flexibility when processing the final panorama.

With the camera locked onto the composition, I worked methodically across the scene, making sure there was enough overlap between each frame. The light continued to develop as I worked, transforming the landscape almost minute by minute. What had started as a dark and cold morning was becoming an incredible display of autumn colour.

Eventually, the sun broke through, casting warm light across the landscape and illuminating Tryfan from behind. For a brief moment, everything came together — the mountain, the autumn colours, the glowing sky and the soft early-morning light.

That is what keeps drawing me back to landscape photography. You can plan the location, check the weather, work out the composition and carry all the right equipment, but you can never completely control what nature gives you. Sometimes, you simply have to be there.

Standing behind the camera that morning, watching the sunrise develop over Eryri, reminded me that the best photographs are often about much more than the final image. They are about the cold morning air, the darkness before dawn, the anticipation, the changing light and the feeling of witnessing something that will never happen in exactly the same way again.

Tryfan had provided the perfect backdrop, and autumn had provided the colour. All I had to do was be there, ready to capture it.