Hunt for the Nannup Falls

It was an early start, not to catch the sunrise, but we had a 3 hour drive ahead of us the get down to Nannup. You see a mate of mine, Beau and I had heard of some 'secret' waterfalls near the town of Nannup, south of Perth. We had seen photos of these beautiful waterfalls overlooking a pine forest, however their exact location was not being revealed by those who had photographed them. So with a general idea of where we might find these falls, we headed down to see if we could discover them for ourselves.

The weather was looking good when we left Perth, but it quickly became overcast as we drove further south. We searched a few of the locations we had identified on Google maps that were likely places where the falls could be but we didn’t have any luck. We decided that perhaps the best plan was to explore the only advertised falls in the area called Beyonderup Falls. We even struggled to find them and in the end needed to ask a local to point us in the right direction.

Recent rain meant that there was plenty of water running, however it also made it difficult to climb up what turned out to be a steep incline to the top of the brook. Eventually we arrived at a point where the scene looked interesting and we started to identify some compositions that had photographic potential.

With overcast conditions, all I needed was my polariser to remove some of the glare off the wet rocks. There was no need for any other filters, I simply used my aperture (f-stop) to reduce the amount of light which enabled me to adjust the shutter speed softening the water with a longer exposure.

The composition I chose was a more intimate scene of the brook. I positioned the camera quite close to the waterfall over the base cutting out most of the surrounding bush. My goal was to capture the different textures of the soft water and the framing river rocks.

We left Nannup, not finding the illusive waterfalls we set out to discover, but walked away with some images that reflected the peaceful afternoon we spent exploring. It was a fantastic and rewarding day, plus the location of Nannup Falls still remain as a mystery for us to solve another day.

If you’d like to be notified when I upload my next landscape photography adventure, please subscribe to my YouTube channel.