Kris has photographed this coast for years, most of it before seven in the morning. The question that comes up more than any question about cameras is simply “where should we go”.
So here they are. The places worth the early start, town by town. Some are famous, some are ten minutes from a car park nobody stops at, and one is a waterfall in a paddock.
One thing before the list, because it is the single most useful fact about photographing here.
This coast faces east. The sun comes up out of the ocean. That means sunrise is the main event, and it means the light that everyone else photographs at, late afternoon on the sand, is flat and backlit here. Count the coastal gallery: fourteen frames are captioned sunrise and six are captioned sunset, and that is not an accident. If you want the good version of any beach on this list, you are getting up early.
The hinterland is the opposite. The valleys hold light late, so save Lismore and the Tweed Valley for the end of the day.
Ballina
Home ground, and the most photographed stretch on this list.
Angels Beach is the pick at sunrise. There are rock pools that fill and drain with the tide and hold the colour of the sky, and dunes behind them that give you something to shoot through. North Boulders, just up the coast, is the harder, better-looking version: a basalt headland, a rock shelf that the swell breaks across, and wildflowers on the headland.
Shelly Beach is the calm one, which makes it the right call with small children. Shaws Bay is flat water and a good black-and-white location. And the Richmond River mouth and the Spit give you the whole town in one frame from the air, and several of the drone frames in the gallery were made over it.
The wharf is worth a look at last light for the boats, and the Burns Point ferry crossing is one of the few places in Ballina where you get a genuine sunset over water, because you are looking west up the river.
Everything Kris shoots in Ballina →
Lennox Head
Fifteen minutes up the coast and, frame for frame, the best value on this list.
Lennox Point is the one. A cliff, a long right-hand point break underneath it, and a grassy headland above it with fence posts that make a foreground. Sunrise from the cliff is the shot, and it works in almost any weather: clear, stormy, or that heavy grey where the swell lights up and the sky does not.
Pat Morton Lookout sits above it and gives you the whole coastline south towards Ballina. Seven Mile Beach runs north from the point and is where you go if you want sand and nothing else in the frame. Lake Ainsworth, right behind the beach, is tea-tree brown, dead still at dawn, and the only place in town where you reliably get a mirror reflection.
Everything Kris shoots in Lennox Head →
Byron Bay
Busy, and still worth it.
Cape Byron and the lighthouse are the postcard, and the walk up is crowded from sunrise onwards. Wategos below it is the calmer version of the same light. If you want Byron without the queue, go to Broken Head: a gap in the headland that frames the beach beyond it, rocks at the southern end, and a fraction of the foot traffic. Several of the best frames in the coastal gallery are from that gap.
North of town, the Brunswick River mouth is flat water, boats and a sandbar, and it is the easiest spot in the shire for a family session that does not involve a climb.
Everything Kris shoots in Byron Bay →
Evans Head
Half an hour south of Ballina and consistently overlooked.
Razorback Lookout is the reason to go: a headland above the town with the beach running south and the river mouth to the north. The Evans River itself is calm, shallow and good at the boat ramp end for families. Main Beach at low tide gives you a long wet reflective apron of sand, which is the closest thing this coast has to a mirror.
Everything Kris shoots in Evans Head →
Lismore and the hinterland
Forty minutes inland, and a completely different job.
The hinterland is for late light, not early. Paddocks, cane, ridgelines and creeks, with the light coming in sideways at four or five in the afternoon. Marom Creek Falls, in the hinterland behind Ballina, is a long-exposure location: water over dark rock, green all around it, and nobody there.
The Lismore Showground is where the events are, and Lismore is a town that runs on them.
Everything Kris shoots in Lismore →
Murwillumbah and the Tweed Valley
The most dramatic backdrop in northern New South Wales, and you do not have to work for it.
Wollumbin stands over the whole valley, and the trick is simply to find a paddock with the mountain behind it and wait for the light to come down. The Tweed River runs through town. The hill at the Tweed Regional Gallery gives you the valley in one look, and the main street is worth a slow walk with a longer lens.
Afternoon and dusk, every time. The valley holds light long after the coast has gone flat.
Everything Kris shoots in Murwillumbah →
Tweed Heads and Kingscliff
The top of the coast, where New South Wales runs into Queensland.
Point Danger at sunrise is the big one, with the Captain Cook memorial on the headland and the whole Gold Coast skyline stacked up behind it to the north. Duranbah sits directly below and is a working surf beach, so there is always something happening in the water. Jack Evans Boat Harbour is the flat-water option, and Kingscliff, a few minutes south, is a long uncomplicated beach with a creek at one end.
Everything Kris shoots in Tweed Heads →
Further south: Angourie and the Clarence
Past Evans Head the coast changes. Angourie is dark rock, blue pools and a headland that photographs better in black and white than in colour, and it is worth the drive if you have a morning.
A note on shooting here
This is Bundjalung Country, and some of these places are significant beyond how they look in a photograph. Headlands especially. If a site is signed, read the sign.
Practically: a family session or personal work on a beach needs nothing from anyone. Commercial work is different, and the rules vary between Ballina, Byron, Lismore and Tweed councils, and again inside a national park. Ask first. It takes one phone call and it is cheaper than being moved on with a client standing there.
And check the tide before you commit to a rock shelf. Half the locations on this list are only there for part of the day.
If you want photographs of your family, your listing or your event in any of these places, tell Kris the date and the spot and he will come back with a number, usually within a day. He lives in Ballina, on his grandfather’s Nyangbal Country, and most of the frames in the coastal gallery were made within an hour of home.
