Mount Tamborine offers fun and interesting hikes through dense rainforest with fantastic views up into the canopy.

Mount Tamborine is located in the Gold Coast Hinterland, about an hour and a half drive from Surfers Paradise in Queensland, Australia.

Covering more than 11 square kilometers Tamborine National Park was formed over 72 million years ago after the Mount Warning volcanic eruption.

With boutique wineries and distilleries, great dining and bed and breakfast options Mount Tamborine is great for anyone wanting a short diversion from a beach based Gold Coast holiday.

Mount Tamborine walks

The Mount Tamborine national park offers the energetic visitor a fun adventure and a genuine rainforest experience.

With lovely walks providing access to waterfalls and overlooks with spectacular views the park offers more than 10 walking trails, most only taking an hour or so to complete.

Three of the most accessible and popular walks on Mount Tamborine include the following:

• Sandy Creek Circuit

• Curtis Falls Walk

• Mount Tamborine Skywalk

If you’re more of a hiker than a photographer you could expect to complete any of these walks in around an hour each.

It's also possible to combine all three walks.

However if, like me, you frequently stop to make photos along the way, you should allow the best part of a day to complete this trio of walks.

Needless to say you'll find plenty of opportunities to make great photos on a Mount Tamborine rainforest walk.

Before you undertake a walk it's a good idea to stop into the tourist information centre. You'll find it on the left hand side of the road near the centre of town.

Sandy Creek Circuit and Cameron Falls

The Sandy Creek Circuit is an easy and enjoyable walk through lush rainforest underneath a towering tree canopy.

Stone steps lead down to the palm fringed creek on the forest floor. From there a 2.6 km circuit travels alongside steep cliff edges and onto the Cameron Falls lookout.

That’s a special place with spectacular views across the gorge to the waterfall and the valley below.

A one hour return walk upstream will take you to a creek crossing where you'll be able to sit on a boulder and take in the tranquil surrounds while listening to the sounds of the bush and the Sandy Creek.

Curtis Falls Trail

The Curtis Falls are located in the Joalah section of the park.

You'll find the Curtis Falls Lolly Shop cafe and ice creamery at the entrance to the Curtis Falls trail.

About 1 km down the trail you're presented with the choice to take the lower creek circuit. It's about a 2 km return trip back to the main trail which passes by giant strangler figs and includes several creek crossings.

The Curtis Falls are best appreciated and, most likely, best photographed from the designated viewing platform.

As a way of protecting local platypus and glow-worm populations access to the rock pools is not permitted and swimming in this particular location is banned.

Eels also live in these rock pools and lyrebirds make their home in the lush, dense rainforest.

Tamborine Skywalk

Opened in 2009 Tamborine Skywalk is privately owned and entrance to the skywalk attracts an admission fee of around $20.

It's a pretty special experience to walk above the rainforest canopy on the 300 metre long steel bridge as you pass over the rainforest 40 metres below.

Local flora is clearly signposted along the walk which, because it’s mostly flat, is a great option for anyone not able to undertake the more challenging Curtis Falls and Sandy Creek circuits.

The Tamborine Skywalk site includes an eco gallery and gift shop, and there's a cafe with a large deck overlooking the rainforest.

The Knoll

The Knoll picnic area and lookout is a special and relatively unknown location on Tamborine Mountain.

Located at the entrance is a large and open learning and picnic area with tables and barbecue facilities.

The grounds are well kept and views across the Scenic Rim to Mount Flinders are quite spectacular.

Mount Tamborine Dappled Light Photos

I visited Mount Tamborine on a bright, hot day and the light coming through the canopy was intense.

Unfortunately dappled light is, more often than not, the death of good landscape and nature photography.

You see under a dense canopy, on a bright day, shadows are going to fill up quite a bit of your composition.

This significant difference between light and dark areas will result in a very high dynamic range between the important highlight and shadow areas within the image.

Experience told me that, as the light was so bright, the shadows were going to photograph very dark. That meant it was going to be tough to maintain detail in all but the lightest shadows.

The challenge was to find a way to resolve some of those difficulties on the way to making a successful photograph.

Needless to say a bit of technique, which I want to share with you here, allowed me to produce an acceptable result and a reasonable representation of what was a fun exploration of the rainforest.

How To Photograph In The Rainforest

I made the photo at the top of this post on a Leica M9 camera with a Leica 24mm f/1.4 M-series lens.

The exposure was made at a shutter speed of 1/60 second and an aperture of f/5.6 at ISO 100.

It’s a highly detailed scene, which makes it quite complex. That makes it hard for the viewer to navigate their way through the scene and focus their attention on a particular focal point. 

Here’s what I did to overcome that problem:

• Focused my lens on an area that was nicely illuminated.

• Framed the scene in such a way so that the area in question was positioned on the rule of thirds.

  You can see the area in question towards the top left portion of the frame.

• Positioned myself so that the tree trunks are acting as leading lines that bring the eye from the bottom of the frame up towards this brighter focal point.

The fact that the majority of trees and leaves that surround our subject are dark also helps lead the eye to our 'hero'.

It’s a simple yet effective way to make sense of an otherwise complex and hard to view scene.

High Contrast Photos That Work

Photography is rarely about photographing amazing scenes. Rather it’s about making good pictures of things that interest you that, for whatever reason, may not be particularly photogenic.

In this case I was out and about on a very bright, hot day photographing under very high contrast conditions.

These are precisely the conditions that are most problematic for landscape and nature photography.

Nonetheless good technique allowed me to produce acceptable results and a reasonable representation of what was a fun exploration of the rainforest.

We can summarize the approach I took to making these photos on my Mount Tamborine rainforest hike as follows:

• Exposing for the highlights, which means I adjusted my camera’s light meter so that the bright leaves and ferns would record as very light tones, without burning out.

• Given the high contrast conditions under which I was photographing I composed my photo around the sunlight leaves and ferns and allowed the darkest shadows to render as black and act to surround (i.e., frame) the illuminated plants.

Photography’s Most Important Mantra?

Rules were meant to be broken, right?

Well, I think that frequently uttered statement makes the most sense based upon the following assumptions:

• You first know the rules

• You understand where they apply

• You know how and when you might go about breaking one or more so-called rules to achieve the desired result

I’ve been teaching photography for many years and there are a number of mantras I continually return to when providing folks with technical feedback.

The first mantra on my list is of critical importance as it relates to the consequences of making photos on bright, sunny days.

Are you ready? If yes, please read on.

The Brighter The Light, The Darker The Shadows Will Photograph

Most people make the majority of their photos on bright, sunny days. It’s when we feel good and are more likely to be outside enjoying life. Right?

Sadly, this kind of lighting is far from ideal when it comes to making good photos, particularly where people are involved.

You can do it, sometimes with brilliant results. But it's tough, particularly for folks who's approach to photography is to say smile and then go click.

The fact is it’s much easier to make beautiful, fully detailed photos under overcast lighting.

Conversely bright, direct light projecting through the rainforest canopy, while beautiful to look at, is really challenging for the photographer.

Composition And high Contrast

Many of the scenes in this post are quite complex. That makes it hard for the viewer to quickly navigate their way into the photo and focus their attention on a particular focal point.

To help overcome this problem I made sure I focused my lens on an area within each image that was illuminated.

I then framed the scene in such a way so that the area in question was positioned prominently within the frame.

By allowing the darker shadows (e.g., tree trunks, rocks) to record black I was then able to employ them as a compositional device (i.e., leading lines) to draw the eye towards the main focal point (i.e., point of interest) within each image.

Consider, for example, the ferns in the photos near the top of this post. The fact that the majority of trees that surround those ferns are dark also helps lead the eye to our hero ferns. 

It may not be possible to make a truly great photo under such high contrast conditions.

However, with a few simple techniques it’s possible to make interesting images that make sense of an otherwise overly complex and hard to photograph scene.

Sure post processing can help save the day.

But for folks who don’t take their photography so seriously, or who simply want to make great photos with their mobile phone camera, composition can really save the day.

Good photography is rarely about photographing glamours people or amazing scenes.

More often than not it’s about making good pictures at interesting places that, for whatever reason, may be very hard to photograph.

Glenn Guy, Travel Photography Guru