WHAT
This is a well-known tourist and photographer's haunt known as "Natural Bridge" or "Natural Arch." It's located in the Springbook National Park (about 90 mins from Brisbane).
The arch/bridge is actually a hole in the roof of a cave. That hole resulted from many, many years of a waterfall far above wearing away the soft rock of the cave's roof.
I took this photo from the concrete walkway which leads into the actual cave.
WHY
Most of the 'classic' images that I have seen taken at this location are shot from inside the cave and are very beutiful. I wanted to get me one of those photos for myself and had never been there before.
Apart from being a beautiful location, the Natural Arch is a very challenging subject to capture: the darkness of the cave interior combined with the bright light coming through the hole in the roof and from outside make it a interesting task for judging exposure times.
I was hoping that I'd get a great shot from inside the cave. However when I got home and looked at my pictures, I realised most of my shots from inside the cave had been taken with a light mist from the waterfall covering my lens.... Curses!!!
With regards to the image posted above, I liked the way the rocks nicely framed the water pouring through the hole in the roof off the cave, almost like you're peering through a window into another world. I happened to glance towards the waterfall on my way into the cave when I spotted this specific location and subsequently had to stop. Lucky I did stop cos it produced the only salvageable image of the day!
HOW
I used a tripod and set the camera to aperture priority and took 3 exposures taken at -2,0,+2. This resulted in the shutter speeds being 1/13, 0.3 and 1.3 seconds respectively. The aperture was set to f4.8.
POST PRODUCTION
The 3 exposures were tonemapped together in Photomatix to produce an HDR image. I made adjustments using the sliders in photomatix until I got a result I was satisfied with.
Hi Kylie. We have a small cabin between Mt Warning & Natural Arch.We were looking at some pics of Natural Arch to promote the area on our websites "Local Attractions"page.(it def needs some pics as it looks pretty boring as is!) & stumbled upon yours & fell in love. It is stunning & does the formation such justice.We would love to use it as the Natural Arch pic but are not a big company but a mom & pop type business with 1 Cabin & as such we have a very limited marketing budget just want some nice pics of our area. Just thought "no harm in asking"..lol Love your work
ReplyDeleteKind Regards Karen & Ian
Our Cabin is called "Waterfall Hideout" & is in Chillingham, Northern NSW.
Deletehttp://www.waterfallhideout.com.au/local-attractions/
Hey Kyle, nice photo, I shot one very similar before entering the cave and getting this picture: http://sbyrnes.deviantart.com/art/Natural-Arch-381061416 . Too bad it didn't turn out well for you, btw there's a cool tree in the waterfall now.
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