September 27, 2025 – Musings from the cold

When I was first given a camera, sometime around 2007, I had no idea how it worked or what I would photograph. But I did know something about light from my time at university and so I experimented. A halogen lamp. An oven tray wrapped in aluminium foil. Windows with lace curtains. I bought flowers from the local florist – single stems arranged in whatever came to hand (a vase, a jar, a glass) – and set them up in areas of the lounge room. And then I played with the light … and learnt how to use the camera.

One wall of the lounge room was painted green, and it became my backdrop. The flowers stood out against it, classical and beautiful. I started to take the camera further afield – to the botanical gardens in Hobart, City Park in Launceston, the rhododendron gardens in Burnie. I photographed red hot pokers and made them redder, the daffodils that popped up unexpectedly under the rose bush in the backyard, and the insides of camellias.

Over time, I started photographing people – people I passed in the Bourke Street mall, those lingering near the steps of H&M listening to the buskers, those waiting at the lights on King Street, or outside Flinders St station. Sometimes I asked permission, sometimes I simply asked by lifting my camera, but always there was a burst of courage required in the approach. Most said yes. Some said no. I learned not to take refusals personally. And not to ask women of a particular age – they always said no. I loved the small exchanges: the older women who wanted to chat, the stories shared in passing, the faces that lingered in my memory – Jiggy, Brabh, Junior, Lisa, Samyrah, Belle, George. I gathered these portraits into a book, Faces of Melbourne – and printed one copy only. It’s one of my favourites.

My practice developed. I hired studios, booked models, attended workshops. I learned posing mostly from the models themselves, and more about lighting from every shoot – how to use a beauty dish, umbrella, softbox, and how to make the most of window light. As the gear expanded so did my knowledge. I’d moved a long way from the days of the halogen lamp and the oven tray wrapped in foil.

One house we lived in had a white brick wall to use as a backdrop, two storeys high and east-facing. It was a space filled with light, and the tulips, hydrangeas, sunflowers, and poppies looked luminous against it.

Then life got in the way …

Eventually, another move, another house. I had a ‘studio’ in this new house, and I painted the walls a neutral colour to use as a backdrop. I kept out some of the lighting gear, thinking I’d get around to using it. But two years passed with only a handful of photographs, none of which excited me. They were just the same, but worse technically. I set up the lights, but couldn’t create anything new. Photography no longer satisfied me in the way it had and I began to wonder if I had anything left to say.

I thought the issue might have been one of space and explored the idea of building a studio in the backyard. But in a moment of clarity, I realised that I hadn’t learnt to use the light in this new house. Shortly after, at a photography workshop in Ballarat, Kris, the facilitator, spoke about recognising your own style – how good it was when someone recognises one of your images as yours because it has a certain style. That struck me and the two ideas became a spark.

I looked around the house again – so many windows, so much light. Different walls, each with its own character/colour/shadows. I realised that what I’d thought was sameness was actually my style, something I’d been building since 2007.

I felt excited again. I made so many different choices, and remembered what a photography teacher had once told me: photography is problem-solving. Given all the problems I was solving (how to hold the reflector in just the right position, how much to open or close the shutters, what to hold the flower with, how close or far away from the background to put the flower), I felt the truth of it. I also knew that the solutions could be simple: a halogen lamp and an oven tray wrapped in foil, a window and a square of black card, a green wall and shutters to shape the light.

And so each morning I reach for my camera and some flowers, and go in search of the light. I fall into a rhythm – one which absorbs and excites me. I feels my style re-emerging, and with it, the outline of a new self.