Situated 17 miles west of Thurso on the remote north coast of Scotland the small village of Melvich is located at the mouth of the river Halladale. With a large sandy beach peppered with rounded boulders and with views of the Orkneys in the distance it is a landscape photographers dream. Facing north the bay offers excellent opportunities in summer for landscape photography with the sun bathing the beach in glorious golden light at both sunrise and sunset, the only downside being a very early start and a late finish!

With the falling tide leaving pools of water to reflect the colours in the sky I searched for a composition that would show off as much of these colours as possible. Fortunately as I was wearing wellies I could stand in the middle of a large pool of water that was mirroring the sky and use a seaweed covered rock for some foreground interest. By positioning the rock in the bottom left hand corner of the image I was able to balance it with the cliffs in the distance. This divided the image into one third sky and two thirds land which also helped to strengthen the composition. I explored the scene with my cameras spot meter and took a number of readings from around the image. For the rock and sand in the foreground to be correctly exposed I would have to use a 3 stop graduated ND filter to hold back the sky and stop it from being blown out. My cameras metering told me that if I were to use an aperture of f16 to ensure front to back sharpness in the image I would need an exposure of almost 2 seconds. A tripod combined with the mirror lock-up function and a shutter release cable would be essential to eliminate any sign of camera shake. Having captured the image I was after and feeling happy as I walked back to my van it dawned on me that I would be able to repeat the whole experience at sunrise in just over four hours time, sleep would have to come later when the landscape was looking this good.