Curtis Falls at Mt Tamborine Queensland

This is my first blog post on the Memories by Cam web site so bear with me as I find my feet and build a comfortable rapport with story telling.

My journey in photography has been going for a few years and I'm still not sure exactly where it's heading - I think this is a common theme among many of the amateur, enthusiast photographers that I speak with. I'm not in any rush to quit my real job to become a full-time, professional photographer but I can see a time in the future when I could possibly earn an income from it (hopefully).

I had a rare mid week day off from my full-time job today so decided to get out an try a couple of my birthday presents (more on those in another post). I decided to head to J.C. Slaughter Falls at Mt Coot-tha as it's less than an hour from home and I haven't been up there for quite a while. Unfortunately, as soon as I arrived I knew it was a waste of time, as the creek running down past the car park (down stream from the falls) was completely dry. I parked and got out of the car for a better look but it was obvious that today wasn't a great day and I'd need to wait for some more sustained rain before heading back.

The next destination was a bit further (about another hour in roughly the same direction) but I figured that I had the day to myself and nothing else pressing to do - so off I went, heading for Curtis Falls in Mt Tamborine.

The extra drive was well worth it and, after a short hike from the car park, I was at the viewing platform at the base of Curtis Falls. I had my Canon 6D Mark II camera body and Canon 16-35mm f/4L lens with me along with the usual bits and pieces that I carry around in my Lowepro camera bag (recently upgraded from a smaller Lowepro bag for my birthday).

There were a few other people around but being mid week, it was quieter than previous visits which is definitely a plus for the long exposure photos I had in mind. I'd packed my NISI 10-stop ND filter for exactly that and wanted to try it out with a nice, vertical drop waterfall like Curtis Falls. However, what I had in mind was less about the waterfall and more about the cascades of water slightly further down stream. I had visualised in my mind the rocky cascades as a foreground element and the actual waterfall as a smaller, background element instead of the more common view of Curtis Falls. Normally, the vertical drop of the waterfall was the main subject of the photo (including my own previous photos here).

Below is the end result after scrabbling over the wet rocks and water up to my knees while waiting for the Instagrammers to move out of frame. I fitted the NISI filter holder and the circular polarising (CPL) filter, tried a few compositions and adjusted the exposure settings.

The day was quite bright but the cloud cover was starting to thicken so I'd hoped for some clouds to tone down the bright highlights. This was a bit of a waiting game - waiting for a cloud to move in front of the sun like a huge, fluffy diffuser. I set my expose for the shadows even though the highlights were blowing out a bit, knowing that they would come down when the clouds came to my rescue. I calculated an exposure of 0.4 seconds with an aperture of f/16 and ISO set to 100 (the lowest native ISO on the Canon 6D). Using the NISI calculator app on my phone I found that adding the 10-stop ND would turn that into a 7 minute, 6 second exposure!!

Having worked out an exposure, I focused on a rock about 1/3 of the way into the scene and enabled the Canon wireless remote trigger. After all this was done, I clipped the filter holder and 10-stop filter to the front of the lens (being careful not to move the focus). Now it was time to sit back and enjoy the serenity while I waited for the clouds to move over the sun and for a couple of young ladies to finish their Instagram posing before I triggered the shot.

After waiting the 7 minutes and 6 seconds required for the exposure I checked the image on the rear screen and decided to slightly adjust the composition and try another shot - the photo below is that second attempt, after a little bit of processing in Lightroom and some sharpening in Photoshop. I've already got another blog post in mind with a walk through of the editing process I used so I'll leave that for another time soon.

So in the end, it took several hours, about 100 kilometres of driving and a couple of cold, wet feet to get this one shot. And I still say it was well worth it for a lovely day out at Curtis Falls.