Sunday’s outing in August 2012 was to Agnes Falls, just north of Toora off the South Gippsland Highway about 2 hours from Melbourne. A crowd of around 13 WCC members and their partners etc decended upon the Agnes Falls Car Park for 10am only to have been beaten there by four unknown photographers shortly before us. We set off on the short walk to the falls and the first thing that struck me was the sheer depth of the gorge which clearly isn’t visible from the car park. The second thing that suprised me was that the four unknown photographers were already on their way back up the path. “Can’t really see the falls and the vantage point isn’t that good” said one of them and a short walk later we too were disappointed by the lack of a vantage point from the small viewing platform which we filled with three tripods. We tried to find better vantage points but to no avail and within 45 minutes we were done and heading back to the cars.
Note to Parks Victoria, the viewing platform and access to the falls is poor and not worth the trip from Melbourne. Considering this is the biggest single drop waterfall in Victoria, you can’t see even half of it and you can photograph even less. Adding to the viewing problem was a howling gale which was making the trees almost impossible to photograph with the longer shutter speeds needed and several people were concerned about falling tree branches. The light was also very blotchy with sunlight shining through the leaves onto the falls.
One good thing though was that I was able to test my new HOYA 0 – 300 variable ND filter and it worked a treat. I managed a 30 second, f/22 shot of the falls in bright daylight. Although the wind was doing its best to ruin the sharpness by blowing the camera around on the tripod.
We scoured the maps for somewhere else to visit so the morning wasn’t wasted and decided upon the boardwalk at Port Franklin but again this was a huge disappointment with the boardwalk being just a few hundred metres long and nothing to be seen to photograph. So it was off to Foster for a coffe and something to eat with some great company then we all went on our merry way.
Dave