The Glass House Mountains are about an hour north of Brisbane and Mount Tibrogargan is one of the most photogenic of the plugs — a steep-sided volcanic remnant that rises abruptly from the flat coastal plain. After the morning on the mountain we drove down to Caloundra to walk the rock shelves at low tide, and the afternoon produced more images than the morning.
The rock platforms at Caloundra extend well out from the foreshore at low tide, and they are the kind of subject that rewards slow movement. There is no dramatic action here — it is landscape and light and the small moments of people moving through a natural space. The image of sunlight reflected in a rock pool, the star-shaped glare from the low winter sun, came from lying down on the wet rock and shooting close to the water surface.
On the rock pools: The Caloundra rock shelf at low tide is a detailed environment. The pools are full of small life — crabs, anemones, small fish — and the rock itself has texture and colour that repays close examination. I tend to work both wide (for the landscape context) and close (for the pool detail), and the best images usually come from a combination of the two.
On the ocean pool: The Caloundra ocean pool is a heritage structure — a tidal pool on the edge of the foreshore that fills with seawater. At low tide on a calm day the surface is almost completely still, and it becomes a mirror for the sky and the structures behind it. I made the reflection image in the first few minutes of arriving and spent the rest of the afternoon wishing I had stayed.
On day trip photography: Day trips are good for photography because the time constraint forces decisiveness. You arrive somewhere you do not know well, you have a limited window, and you have to make quick judgements about where to go and what to photograph. The images that come from this kind of pressure are often more interesting than the ones made on a long, unhurried visit.
The Glass House Mountains are worth the drive on a clear winter morning.