Most Brisbane sessions are shot in about six places. South Bank, the Story Bridge from Howard Smith Wharves, the City Botanic Gardens, Kangaroo Point, Roma Street Parkland, Mount Coot-tha. They are on the list for good reasons, and we have written about when each of them works.
They are also busy, and they produce photographs that look like everyone else's photographs.
What follows is the other list. None of it is secret, but none of it turns up in the first page of search results either, and all of it is inside about twenty-five minutes of the CBD.
Fortitude Valley laneways
Bakery Lane, California Lane and Winn Lane sit within a few hundred metres of each other. Street art, heritage brickwork, roller doors, fire escapes. The look is harder and more urban than anything the river gives you, and it suits people who feel awkward standing in a garden.
The light is the whole game here. A laneway is a narrow slot between two buildings, so for most of the day it is in shade with a strip of hot sun running down one wall. That strip is what you work with: stand your subject in the shade, let the lit wall opposite act as a reflector, and the result is soft and directional without a single light stand.
Best time. Early morning, before the shops open and before the bins come out. By late morning the laneways are working spaces again, with deliveries, customers and people who would rather not be in your frame.
Watch out for. These are private tenancies opening onto public lanes. A quick word with whoever is unlocking the door usually settles the question of where you can stand.
Spring Hill heritage streets
Ten minutes from the CBD on foot and almost nobody shoots there. Victorian terraces, stone churches, retaining walls, the old windmill on the ridge. The streets fall steeply, which gives you staircases, terraces and landings to build a frame around instead of a flat lawn.
Overcast days are better than bright ones. Sandstone and painted timber both hold detail in flat light, and hard midday sun across a stone facade turns it into a mess of black shadow.
Watch out for. A large share of the heritage buildings in Spring Hill are people's homes. Photograph from the footpath, keep the frame off the front door, and ask if you want to go up a driveway.
Paddington
Given Terrace and Latrobe Terrace run along a ridge, and the side streets and pedestrian cuts between them drop away toward the city. That gives you two things in one walk: rows of Queenslanders with deep front verandahs, and a city view from a residential street rather than a lookout.
Verandahs are the reason to come in the morning. A Queenslander verandah is a covered outdoor room with light coming in low from one side, which is close to a free studio. Later in the day the sun is above the roofline and the verandah goes flat.
The forest behind Mount Coot-tha
The lookout and the botanic gardens at the base are on everybody's list. The tracks are not. JC Slaughter Falls and the Simpson Falls track give you closed forest canopy, rock, and running water after rain.
This is a green, contained, quiet look with no city in it at all, which is the point. Autumn is the reliable window. Between March and May the tracks are dry enough to walk in good shoes, the humidity has dropped, and there is usually still enough recent rain for the falls to be doing something.
Watch out for. Under canopy you lose two or three stops of light against the open ground fifty metres away, and the light that reaches you is green. Both are fixable, but only if the photographer expects them.
The water at first light
The lower paths and mangrove boardwalks along the river at Kangaroo Point are a different location from the clifftop above them, and they are at their best at dawn. Still water, city reflections, and a skyline that reads as a silhouette rather than a background.
Sunrise sessions have one advantage that no amount of planning buys later in the day: the place is empty. You get an hour with the location to yourself, and in Brisbane in summer you also get the only cool part of the day.
Weather, by season
December to February. Shoot early. Storms build with the heat and tend to arrive in the late afternoon, which is exactly when an evening session wants to be outside. Humidity is hard on people standing still in formal clothes, and it fogs a lens that has come out of an air-conditioned car.
June to August. Clear skies, dry air, comfortable temperatures. The catch is that sunset moves back to around 5:00 pm, so an after-work session stops being possible. The month-by-month sunset table has the figure for any date you are considering.
Access, parking and permission
In the city. Check early-bird rates at the CBD car parks before you drive in. A sunrise start will usually qualify for one and a late-afternoon start will not, and on a two-hour session the difference is not trivial.
In the suburbs. Street parking is generally available in Paddington and Spring Hill, with resident-only restrictions on some streets. Read the sign rather than the kerb.
Permits. Commercial photography on council land can carry a permit requirement separate from any booking for the space itself, and the requirements change. Confirm the current position with Brisbane City Council, or with the relevant council outside the Brisbane local government area, before you commit to a location.
Private property. Most of what makes Spring Hill and Paddington photograph well is somebody's house. Stay on the footpath unless you have asked.
Choosing between them
If you want the session to look like Brisbane, use the river and the parks. If you want it to look like nowhere in particular, go to the forest. If you want it to look like the person in the frame rather than the city behind them, the laneways and the verandahs do that better than a skyline does, because there is nothing in the background competing for attention.
We photograph across Brisbane, Ipswich, the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast. Send us the location you have in mind and the date, and we will tell you what the light is doing there that week.
