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"Very pleasing and relaxing day trip and some great shots to go with it… can’t ask for much more than that" |
Big Crystal Creek waterhole offers great swimming, camping, hiking, picnicking and of course photography.
These shots were taken at Big Crystal Creek waterhole in January of this year. Crystal Creek is part of the Paluma Ranges and located about 60mins north of Townsville city. Paluma is a mountain top village surrounded by rainforest offering a quiet and relaxing natural escape.
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Along the Paluma Range highway you will come across Big and Little Crystal Creeks, both waterholes are great for swimming, picnicking, camping (with permit), hiking and of course photography. Little Crystal Creek is located about half way up Mt Speck under a magnificent, old Roman arch bridge built in the 1930s. Big Crystal Creek and the camping grounds are at the bottom of the mountain, about 15-20mins north of the Paluma turn off.
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I spent my day exploring, swimming and photographing the Big Crystal Creek water hole. The water flows from the top of Paluma Ranges, down Crystal Creek and forms a large swimming hole at the bottom, aka Big Crystal Creek. As the area had received a reasonable amount of rain over the previous week, the flow of water was quite fast. I wanted to focus on the rapid flowing stream, blur the movement of the water and capture the beauty of the area. I stopped down my aperture to about f22 so I could slow the shutter speed to 1/8th of a second. This allowed me to hand hold the camera but still burr the waters motion. I probably should have taken and used my tri-pod to eliminate camera shake, however with steady hands and some help from the river rocks, I was able to survive without it for the day.
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The sun was very bright and I found it difficult to get any shots of the rocks due to the high contrast. The best time to shoot was when the sun finally went behind the clouds and diffused the light better. I also metered off the rocks and dialled in a ½ stop under-exposure to ensure I didn’t blow out the highlights and still retain detail in the shadows. Very pleasing and relaxing day trip and some great shot to go with it… can’t ask for much more than that.
Hutch @ AZ