The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness ― John Muir
I find such peace when surrounding myself with nature, Springbrook National Park really lets you do this. The park is around 100km south of Brisbane (Queensland) and is part of a group of shield volcanoes covering over 6000 ha. I headed out with a few friends and spent the day walking just a small percentage of the tracks to a couple of the more well known sites. Passing through a forest like this, it’s hard to really capture through photography how large and all encompassing it is. I decided, in an attempt to capture some sort of scale, to take my Rokinon 8mm fisheye for a field test. I’ve not done a review on this lens yet as it’s been a really tricky fella to get the hang of, and I felt it would be unfair to judge it until I’d learnt how to use it properly (my problem, not its).
Some people really don’t like the distortion created by the lens, I personally love it as it really gives that sensation of overbearing and vastness of the forest. One of the issues I’m having is getting the correct exposure so you’ll see a few HDR (High Dynamic Range) photos below. I’ve also included a couple of photos from the 15-85mm.
We visited Natural Bridge first which is a naturally formed arch creating a wonderful waterfall into a cave which is home to glowworms. We then headed on to Purlingbrook Falls, in a few of the photos you can see quite a bit of smoke hanging around in the air from a bush fire that was burning to the south of the hills.
As always, click on the photos to view larger versions.
