Friday, January 7, 2011

Leura Cascades - Blue Mountains, Australia

Leura Cascades - Blue Mountains, Australia
Leura Cascades - Blue Mountains, Australia 

I went up to the Blue Mountains with Dean Toh last weekend to shoot the Leura Cascades. It was a 4.00AM start for us, as we wanted to make it up there while the light was good. The waterfall, as the name implies, is a series of small drops along a rocky slope. The largest of the drops is a couple of meters in height.

More images after the jump.

Leura Cascades - Blue Mountains, Australia
Leura Cascades - Blue Mountains, Australia

I've got hooked on taking panoramas and I managed to capture a couple of decent ones during this outing. The shot above is one of the bigger drops of the cascades. It's about a meter and a half in height.  I decided to compose this as a panorama because I felt that the ferns on either side of the stream and the moss covered rocks along the creek bed added interest and framed the actual waterfall itself. I created this panorama by stitching 16 images.

Leura Cascades - Blue Mountains, Australia
Leura Cascades - Blue Mountains, Australia

This is the last and the largest drop along the Leura Cascades. It is the same section of the falls as the first image on this post. I wanted to go for a portrait format on this one to capture the lush vegetation above the waterfall. I feel the vegetation balances out the composition while the waterfall remains the primary focus of the image.

Leura Cascades - Blue Mountains, Australia
Leura Cascades - Blue Mountains, Australia

This photograph was taken at the top of the waterfall and shows a few of the smaller drops that I spoke about earlier. I captured it as a panorama to emphasise the flowing water. If I used a standard 3 x 2 composition for this one, I would have not been able to capture the entire waterfall and the vegetation in the one frame. This panorama was created by stitching 8 images.

Leura Cascades - Blue Mountains, Australia
Leura Cascades - Blue Mountains, Australia

This is a close up of the drop which I captured in the first panorama on this post. I managed to get to an exposed rock in the middle of the stream to set up for this one. All these images were captured with a Canon 7D and the 24-105mm lens. I also used a circular polariser and a tripod as these were long exposures (most of them were 4 seconds).

Leura Cascades - Blue Mountains, Australia
Leura Cascades - Blue Mountains, Australia

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