David Wilson has spent many years taking photographs of Wales’s landscapes, from Snowdonia and the Brecon Beacons, to Pembrokeshire and the Gower.
In 2016, when asked by the creators of hit show Hinterland/Y Gwyll to do the same in Ceredigion, he jumped at the chance.
The photographs he took, later published in ‘Hinterland – Ceredigion Landscapes’, capture the rugged beauty of the county which had already turned the heads of the show's creators.
“It feels like nowhere else in Wales, primarily up in the Cambrian mountains. I know ‘unique’ is a word people use all the time, but it really did feel like a unique experience,” said David Wilson, describing his experiences.
Ceredigion was, in many ways, one of the main characters in Hinterland, and the county’s landscapes shaped the atmosphere of the show.
Hinterland, which ran between 2013 and 2016 and aired on both S4C and BBC1, was a Welsh noir-drama which became an international success story.
Following Richard Harrington and Mali Harries as police detectives based out of Aberystwyth, the series was released in both Welsh and English.
David’s photographs capture both the filming and sets, as well as landscapes which didn’t necessarily feature in the series.
One aspect of the county which particularly captured Mr Wilson’s imagination was the Cambrian mountains.
“It felt like being out on the prairie, I suppose, in America," he said. "Just endless grasslands."
David added: "What I really love is the fact that you can drive down these dead-end tracks and feel as though you could get really lost, and that you might need to phone for help.
"I just love that feeling of being isolated and lost.”
The production crew asked David to come along to a day’s shoot, and take some photos of the filming taking place.
“I met them at Llyn Syfydrin, which is up in the middle of nowhere, for a few hours.
"I met the cast and crew and I just tried to take a few photos of them actually making the programme.
"The rest of the time I went around Ceredigion and visited specific places in the programme, like Devil’s Bridge, and then I went to other places that didn’t appear in the programme."
Mr Wilson travelled from his base in Pembrokeshire regularly for several months in 2016, spending days “traipsing” around the countryside and documenting what he found. During his day documenting activity on set in July, the crew were actually filming the final episodes of series three.
Y Gwyll/Hinterland video interviews:
“The day I went on set it was in July 2016, and it was a reasonably nice day when we got into Aberystwyth,” he said.
“By the time we’d got to the lake it seemed about ten degrees cooler and it just rained… there were curtains of mist and rain all day and they were desperately trying to get filming done between the downpours.”
Despite starting his work in March and not finishing until November, he noticed the Cambrian mountains always seemed to have a unique atmosphere.
“That’s one of the strange things about the Cambrian mountains, it’s very difficult to know what time of year you’re in,” said David, explaining how, even in summer, the mountains kept their distinct, "gritty" charm.
You can see the photographs and more of Mr Wilson’s work from across Wales on his website.
