I don't want everything during our Noosa holidays to be about beaches and early morning jogging so to that end I try to choose a couple of photographic targets to shoot during the week we are away.

Now most of the really interesting terrain is inland from the Noosa coast in an area colloquially known as the "hinterland" so this is where I tend to explore. I had heard that there was a great lookout at Mapleton Falls so I was up early (4am) on a morning dictated by absence of cloud cover and headed off in the dark armed with Google Maps and my camera gear.

The lookout is about a 40 minute drive inland from the coast initially on main roads which very quickly become secondaries until eventually becoming narrow and winding country lanes.

When I was within about 2km (1.25miles) from the lookout point, with the sky lit only by a setting moon, I could see, through the trees, what appeared to be a large body of water off to the south of the road. This had me a bit stumped as I couldn't remember any large lakes on the maps I had studied. The partial view of this "lake" continued all the way to the lookout where, finally, the truth was revealed.

The entire valley floor was covered in a roiling, misty, moonlit inversion layer! As I stood in the still air of the chilly pre-dawn the distant hills were no more than silhouettes against a crisp starlit sky and in the background the only sound I could hear were the falls as they fell to the valley floor some 80m (250ft) below my feet.

I set up the tripod and camera and started the process of shot practice to ensure I would have the panorama positions and orientation worked out before I needed to actually take the shot I wanted.

In the end I took upwards of 20 panoramas of the valley at various stages during the changing light of the sunrise. This shot stands out as my favorite though.

The mist has receded sufficiently to expose the trees in the midground, the approaching clouds in the background had risen up to provide interesting textures in the sky and the sun, just above the horizon and out of shot to the left, is throwing a golden light across the far hills and just nicking the top of the hills to the right.

There are 2 smaller details which also stand out for me in this shot - the trees silhouetted against the sky on the right of the image and even more particularly the image of the sun refracting back to the camera off the surface of the mist just off center at the far edge of the valley.

It was a fitting end to a magical morning.

The Photographer's Ephemeris let me confirm the line the light from the early morning sun would take on the morning in question. That way I knew that the valley would be favorably lit.

The day itself was chosen on the basis of sufficient cloud cover over the land to make for an interesting sky texture while at the same time there being as little cloud as possible on the horizon so as not to block the sunrise. As always Cloud Free Night allows me to project the 7-day cloud cover expected for any region in Australia so I was able to pick the day with the highest probability of these conditions being true.

The use of a topological map usually lets me choose the best vantage point for a shot but in this particular case a ready-made lookout was already available.