Since relocating to in the Rhondda Valley, I’ve become fascinated by the Rhondda Heritage Park located in Trehafod. I first noticed it while walking my dog along the National Cycle Route 881 from Y Porth.
The Rhondda Heritage Park based at the former Lewis Merthyr Colliery, Trehafod, is one of the top heritage and cultural visitor attractions in South Wales and provides a fun and interesting day out for individuals, groups, school children and students.
The tower and other buildings are clearly visible on the skyline, nestled between two sets of hills, as looked down upon from the north. I used both a ‘standard’ lens and a telephoto lens to capture a range of images at sunset. I’d been wanting to capture some shots for a while, and nearly gave up on this occasion as it had been raining quite heavily earlier in the evening (as is common for the Valleys). I’m glad I went out with my camera and tripod, despite the fact that it meant a ~2 mile round trip from home.
I’m hoping to produce some definitive pieces of artwork based on the buildings in and around the Park, and how they interact with the surrounding countryside. These preliminary shots, from some distance away and from a few angles, give me inspiration to get closer to the buildings or see if I can approach them from a different angle — bearing in mind that I’ve no idea how accessible the hillside to the south is, in order to get a similar distance away!
Anyway, here are some of the photos I took. They are intentionally quite dark, given that they were taken after sunset, but if you’re viewing on a PC they may seem exceptionally dark. That’s due to the differences between how a Mac (which I use) and a PC display things on screen. Anyway, I hope it gives you an idea of one of my first Welsh projects.
Before the sunset, a fairly flat grey sky against which to display the fantastic orangey-red metal structures.
The tower backed by interesting gradation of cloud.
Closeup of one of the structures.
A shot of the main complex.
Slightly closer in.
And another...
Some interesting reflections of sky and trees in this row of semi-circular windows.
The sky began to get really interesting with clouds and varying colours including some purple, and the structures began to take on a silhouetted look.
The main structure with great clouds.
A nice silhouette closeup.
The tower once lit up, presumably from a display light within the Park, and with interesting cloud.
A closeup of the lit tower.
Another silhouette with a cloudy 'figure' alongside.
Though it might not be immediately obvious what this is, it is in fact the River Rhondda Fawr which passes to the north of the Park and Trehafod. This was captured with a fairly slow shutter speed (given light levels) but managed to capture a range of faster and slower moving water, hence the patterning effect. I'd love to experiment more with this.
I hope you enjoyed seeing these photos. Bear in mind they’re just preliminary shots that may or may not make it into any “final” pieces. I’ll be adding more photos and possible digital derivatives once I’ve found a good time to do another shoot around the Heritage Park.
