Waterfalls always make for great landscape photography subjects. Here in southeast Queensland, we are fortunate to have several beautiful waterfalls within a few hours' drive of the city of Brisbane.

In this series, I will take you through some of my favorite locations and provide a few tips on how to get the best photographs.

The Warrie Circuit in Springbrook National Park is a beautiful hike along the canyon cliffs and down into the depths of the Springbrook rainforest. The track and national park is an easy 45 minute drive from the Gold Coast or 90 minutes from Brisbane.

When you arrive, you can choose the full 17 km grade 4 circuit or you can just do the more popular 1.3km walk down to Twin Falls. My preference is the longer 17 km counterclockwise hike, as it passes past some very scenic cascades and provides the full rainforest experience without the crowds. Regardless of which route you take, there is plenty to see and photograph. For this article, I will describe the shorter hike down to Poondarah Falls, as that is most accessible location for most visitors.

Starting from the Tallabana picnic area, the hike down Twin Falls takes roughly 25 minutes and provides some great views down into the Springbrook valley and across to Surfers Paradise on the coast. Twin Falls is where most visitors finish their walk, but if you keep following the circuit for another 30 to 35 minutes you reach Poondarah Falls. Poondarah Falls is a multi-tiered set of falls that you can pass several times as the track cuts its way down into the valley.

Poondarah Falls is a difficult waterfall to photograph. The trick is to catch it a few days after heavy rain, once the water has subsided but while there is still enough moisture in the surrounding vegetation to give your photographs that additional sparkle.

To find the best vantage point, you will have to do some scrambling, so be careful and do not be afraid to get your feet wet. When photographing waterfalls, I try to set up in locations where I can connect the lower stream in one single line all the way back to the cliff face. I also like to use low angles, so getting in the water is a necessity.

Focus stacking is the best way to keep your images sharp all the way from the foreground to the background as the cliff face is some way from the walking track. It can also be quite windy around falls. When this occurs, I time my photographs carefully and I usually stick to single images, set at 0.3 to 0.5 seconds with the f-stop all the way down to f/16 or f/18 (noting I use a medium format camera and lenses where lens sharpness is generally not an issue at the smaller apertures).

Like most rainforest photography, I recommend using a circular polarizer to take the glare off the water and saturate the surrounding vegetation. A light but solid hiking tripod is also essential to keep your camera steady and your images sharp as not much light penetrates to the forest floor.

Poondarah Falls is just one of the many spectacular falls that you can see on the Warrie Circuit. If you are fit and enjoy a day out, I recommend completing the full circuit. It is one of southeast Queensland's best day hikes, and it passes through beautiful ancient rainforest and across mossy forest streams. I have included an image below showing what awaits along the full circuit.

Finally, a point on being safe. All of the waterfalls and tracks I will describe in the upcoming articles are hazardous. They are steep, slippery and subject to sudden changes in water volume. Keep your wits about you and do not push your luck. People have fallen and the consequences have been fatal.

Keep an eye out for part 2....