The Photographic Zones of the Blue Mountains But for the visitor who wants to initially limit their time and distance the Upper Blue Mountains are more than enough for several days and weeks of photographing and exploring. But the Greater Blue Mountains extends further west across the Oberon plains, Kanangra wilderness and through the amazing Jenolan Caves areas as well as north towards Mudgee passing Lithgow, Wollemi wilderness, Gardens of Stone and Wolgan & Capertee Valleys – all amazing areas to explore in their own right.

Late 1800s settlers created a route across the plateau, now taken over by the Great Western Highway which is the modern backbone for photographers travelling across this amazing landscape. Consider this when deciding to do a long valley hikes – great for fitness less for big landscape shots. The walks on the valley floors are great for tree, vegetation and wildlife shots but with very few clearings, shots looking up at cliffs are few and far between.

The erosion is also due to wind, heat and ice causing thousands of years of landslides as weaker rock inside the layers give way under the weight of the heavier sandstone.įor the photographer this has resulted in a unique environment of sheer exposed cliffs, temperate rain forests on the valley floors, with large waterfalls dropping over the cliff edges, an abundance of rare plant and wildlife plus some unique atmospheric and micro weather conditions. Over many millions of years since then several valleys have formed in these plateaus as the waters from the various rivers and creeks have eroded this sandstone. The high plateau is 170 million year old layers of sediment pushed up as part of the movement of the earths crust that resulted in the Great Divide. The Blue Mountains is a plateau that rises up over 1000m above the plains west of Sydney.

Print or Tablet friendly downloadable PDF version 1.8MB A Landscape Photographers Guide to Visiting the Blue Mountains, Australia

The general tourist or hiking sites tend to not consider the ‘photogenic’ aspects of the mountains, even though many come for that, so this site is also a response to that.įor now though a broad sweep introduction to photographing Australia’s Blue Mountains – All text and images © Gary P Hayes 2017. This ‘hotspot’ photo location list also details best gear to bring and best times etc:). Inspired by other guides for photographers in well known areas of the world (eg: Colby Brown’s Yosemite) I thought I would put together a page / few screens that (a) demystifies the Blue Mountains for visiting photographers and (b) acts as a nice upfront, illustrated walkthrough to my more detailed location-by-location guide on this site.

Ynab budgeting in 1o minutes