Welcombe Beach Waterfall

As a glance at any of Hartland's beaches shows, the grain of the landscape, derived from the folding of its underlying strata, runs east-west. A series of river valleys once sloped down to the peninsula's west coast but millennia of erosion by the sea has truncated them. They now form hanging valleys ending at a cliff edge, over which waterfalls tumble to the beach below.

Having photographed the setting sun from the beach, I relocated rapidly up the cliff to capture this waterfall as the sky reached maximum colour. I wanted to show texture in the waterfall but a smooth sea so the rock ridges stood out, wjilst minimising digital noise in the landscape. Achieving these three objectives required three different shuttter speeds, all at f/11. The land and sky were shot at 0.6 seconds (ISO 400), the waterfall at 1/6 second (ISO 1600) and the sea at 30 seconds (ISO 100 plus ND filter).