Photographing in the Blue Mountains

The drive up the Great Western Highway takes a bit over an hour from the Hills District, and somewhere past Springwood the air changes. You can feel it through the window. Cooler, cleaner, smelling of eucalypt and wet sandstone.

Most of the people who book me as a Blue Mountains photographer make that drive too, and they arrive the way I do. A little cold, a little quiet, taking a minute to adjust to how much space is suddenly in front of them.

I'm a Sydney and Hills District photographer most weeks, working in backyards and parks and kitchens with the afternoon coming through a window. The mountains are where I go when a session wants more air around it.

The light along the escarpment

Photographing in the Blue Mountains is mostly about the hour you choose. The valleys hold light instead of bouncing it back at you, so sun comes over the ridge, lands in a bowl of eucalypt a few hundred metres below, and what rises back up is soft, warm and faintly blue at the edges.

Late afternoon is what I book. The sun drops behind you, the far wall of the valley goes pink and then amber, and the light on skin is about as kind as light gets anywhere in New South Wales.

At Govetts Leap there's roughly 40 minutes of it. I plan the session around that window and treat everything before it as warm-up.

Mist is part of the picture

Cloud comes up over the lip of the escarpment and fills the frame in 2 minutes, then thins again just as quickly.

I keep shooting through it. A figure against white, a gum tree half dissolved, 2 people holding on to each other with the world gone soft behind them. Those frames are often the ones people choose for the wall.

Reading the forecast, I look at cloud base and wind before rain. A base sitting at 900m puts Blackheath inside the cloud while Wentworth Falls, a couple of hundred metres lower, stays clear, and that's usually enough to move a session 15 minutes back down the highway.

Warm layers photograph beautifully

It's normally 6 to 8 degrees cooler up there than it is at home, and a clifftop wind takes a few more off that.

So I lean into it. Big knits, wool coats, a long skirt with enough weight to move properly in the wind, a blanket 2 people can share.

Bring a coat for between frames, and thermals under anything light. For children, a beanie, gloves and a spare pair of socks in the car, because someone always finds water.

The drive up, and how I plan the day

I allow an hour and a half door to door from the Hills District, and a little more on a weekend, when traffic through Leura moves slowly.

I'll send a dropped pin for parking rather than an address. A few of the spots I like sit a short walk from a car park you'd otherwise drive straight past.

If you're coming this far, make a day of it. Breakfast in Leura, a slow wander, the session in the last of the afternoon, dinner before you head home. Closer to the city I keep a running list of the best photoshoot locations in Sydney, and the mountains earn the drive when you want weather and space in the frame.

Clifftops with children, calmly

When little ones are coming I choose fenced lookouts, and there are plenty of them. Echo Point, Govetts Leap and Cahill's Lookout all have solid rails, level ground and parking close by.

That gives me the whole valley behind you while your 3-year-old does what a 3-year-old does, which is run.

Away from the fences I set up well back from the edge and use a longer lens. The drop still reads in the picture while every foot stays on wide flat rock.

I ask that each small child has a grown-up with free hands, agreed before the session starts. It's the thing that lets everyone stop watching the edge and enjoy the hour.

Why it suits a proposal

A proposal up here comes with its own cover story. Nobody questions a drive to a lookout at sunset, and there's always a reason to stand still and look at something for a while, which is all the time I need.

I shoot from a distance with a long lens, dressed like anyone else on the track, and you'll pick me out afterwards rather than before.

The light does half the work, and the valley gives you a background that still explains itself in 30 years. If you're weighing the mountains against the harbour, I've written up the best places to propose in Sydney as well.

Couples with no ring in a pocket get the same benefit. The cold gives you a reason to hold on to each other, and the wind keeps everyone moving, which is when people look most like themselves.

Booking a Blue Mountains photographer around the weather

People who book me as their Blue Mountains photographer usually ask about rain first. I pencil a second date at the same time the following week, and it costs nothing to hold.

The call gets made the afternoon before, off cloud base, wind and the radar rather than the summary icon on a phone.

Season moves the session time as much as anything. In June the good light is finished by 4:30pm, and in January it's still going past 7, so I set the hour once I know the month.

Sessions up here are priced the same as my Sydney ones, and the detail sits on my packages.

The frame I keep

My favourite picture from the last session at Evans Lookout came after the shooting had finished.

Both of them in the car park, sharing a blanket, hair completely wild, laughing about how cold they were while the car heater caught up.

The valley gave them exactly what they'd asked for, and that car park frame is the one now hanging in their hallway.