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I really wanted to do a photo shoot with water -  I was pretty keen to try and capture the flow of a stream or waterfall. My partner had the great idea to go out and do a little day trip out to Springbrook.

So we hopped in the car and drove down to Springbrook. Springbrook was about an hours drive from Brisbane… maybe a little shorter if you don’t take a few wrong turns

The drive doesn’t feel like it takes that long but in fact you end up almost leaving the sunny state of Queensland and entering New South Wales. I was very surprised when I saw a sign pointing to Murwillumbah – only 30kms!

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The photo above is a shot of a small creek at Springbrook. This shot was taken at the first of many national parks at Springbroook. I used HDR on this photo to bring out the full range of the photo and did a little work on the colours to bring out the blues and greens.

There’s a few walking tracks you can explore and these shots were taken on the shorter walking tracks which were roughly 300m long and easy to navigate. There’s a couple of harder tracks that are between 4 to 6km long but they were partially closed as part of the track gave way in a storm.

The photo on the left is of a small stream. Unfortunately there wasn’t enough water in it to try and capture the effect of flowing water but it’s a nice little nature shot.

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The end of the first track we walked down took us to the top of a pretty big waterfall. Unfortunately the best photo of the waterfall would be taken from the bottom section of the track which was closed off. This photo on the right is taken from the lookout at the end of the track and was my first real chance to try and capture a water flow in a photo. To take the shot I put the camera in Shutter Priority mode and dropped the shutter speed down to 1/40 sec. Slowing the shutter speed means you capture more of the motion which gives you a whispy / flowy type effect with the water. I’m pretty happy with the result

I also had a play with a few other shutter speeds but wasn’t as happy with the results. If you slow down the shutter speed even more you end up with an exaggerated flowy stream of water – something you’d probably expect to see in a lord of the rings film.

After taking this shot we backtracked to the entrance point at the park and walked to the other side of the waterfall. There was more of a walkway over there which sat a little bit lower than the lookout so I was hoping to get a better shot from that side of the waterfall.

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And that’s where I took this second shot from. This is the same waterfall taken from the walking track. I’ve used the same settings on the camera again – shutter priority and 1/40 sec. I also played with the shutter settings some more here but 1/40 seems to be the magic number in this shot

This was as far as I could go along this track without negative political consequences

The track continued for another 4 or 5 kms and ends up at the base of the waterfall. Normally you can walk under the waterfall and take a track back to the start but a section of the track is washed away and closed until further notice.

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So this concluded our little tour of Springbrook National Park. The next item on the agenda was something called the Natural Bridge. The Natural Bridge is a rock arch over a creek (photo on the right).

A constant stream of water flowing through the top of a cave has created this amazing little cave. The cave is also home to a colony of glow worms. It was a pretty cold day so unfortunately we didn’t feel like sticking around until night time to check out glow worms… maybe in summer?!?

At the top of the photograph you can see the rock formation arching over to join the two sides of the creek. The water is falling down into the cavern and you can’t see it in this photo but there is a cavern structure to the left and behind the water.

The shot on the right is using the same camera settings before… shutter priority at 1/40th sec. I’m really happy with how this shot came out – I haven’t digitally touched up this photograph at all

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This is another shot of the Natural Bridge from a slightly different angle. The main reason I uploaded this shot is because I like it

Nah I just think that the little mound in the front goes really well with the blue water and the green mossy rocks… like I said – I like it!

From the base of the bridge it’s a very short walk to the cavern underneath – literally five minutes. As you move around the bridge it’s appearance really changes. I think it has more to do with the foreground objects – whether it’s a muddy little mound of dirt or a big mossy boulder it’s an incredible sight that I just couldn’t stop taking photos of. Trust me when I say there’s a lot of photos that I could’ve put up here!

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Inside the cavern is really amazing. It’s hard to capture just how incredible the cavern is on camera. It was a pretty dim sort of day so this hot is a little darker than I would’ve liked.

I couldn’t see any glow worms. It’s pretty dark so I don’t know why we couldn’t see them. Maybe they only glow at certain times of the day – not sure but we didn’t see any glow worms

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