Blackwater at Little Garve-1

My favorite place for landscape photography along with haggis and single malt whisky. The highlands, a stunning opportunity around every corner. Driving up the main road which leads from Inverness to Ullapool you cross over a bridge with a waterfall on the left, from driving over it is quite un assuming but do take the time to park up and have a proper gander. What you will find is a fast flowing river, the river Blackwater. At this point the river is punctuated with a series of large boulders and falls. I had driven past on many occasions and even stopped once before inadequately equipped to take away the image I wanted. This time I was fully armed with an arsenal of equipment to create what I had pre visualised. I set up my tripod the trust and extremely heavy Benbo 5 with the Canon EOS 550d on top, this tripod is sturdy enough to allow all movements with any camera lens combinations without the feeling of what might end up in the drink. The superb ultra wide Sigma EX10-20 mm set to F.22 to accentuate the movement of water and cloud, this does add some softness to the edges of the image but I think not too much to be obtrusive, on top of this I also added a Tiffen ND3 filter to give me 10 stops extra exposure, using ISO 100 for minimum noise offered an exposure time of two minutes and 30 seconds. The great Benbo keeping all non moving parts of the subject razor sharp while the rest takes on the fantastic silky smoothness synonymous with these type of long exposures. The ultra wide lens allowed me to compose is such a way to add some excellent foreground detail, the sedimentary bands is the sand stone and the texture of the river basin pebbles add a great juxtapose to the rushing torrent. Carrying all that heavy gear in my Billingham 550 along with the scaffold-esque tripod will make me tired but when the chips are down I can be sure to perform regardless of what the subject matter throws at me.
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