Self portrait while filming the gannet colony on Bird Island Marine Protected Area in Nelson Mandela Bay, South Africa, 2008
There is a fundamental universality to our experiences of life: the details vary yet we recognise our own stories in those of others. Although my photographs grow from my story, it delights me that each picture carries a unique tale for every viewer.
My conceptual photographs are visual metaphors for the less tangible
emotional aspects of personal life experiences, while my nature cameos
and landscapes are simply for the delight of sharing the ‘breathspace’
nature conveys.
Over the years photographing nature organically became a meditation
for me. With my camera in hand framing my vision, I slip into a calmness
and focus, a complete presence in the present moment, be it during the
process of capturing light in my camera or later moulding what I've
caught in my digital lightroom.
BIOGRAPHY:
More autodidact than academic, I found I learned less through institutions and more through reading, observing, questioning, and good old ‘trial-and-erro-oh-wow!’
After somehow surviving a stifling schooling with my creativity
intact, I skipped both tertiary education and Jo’burg to venture abroad,
alternating between freelancing as a self-taught graphic designer and
hitching rides to go hiking around some of the wilder places in the
world, directed by whim, happenstance, and intuition. My backpack/pet
monster carried all I needed: tent, stove, and sleeping bag as well as a
pair of lightweight film cameras, a few rather heavier lenses, and an
even heavier tripod.
Six years, four continents, and plenty of
University of Life education later, I landed in Cape Town and started my
own business: primarily graphic design until photography overtook it
completely. For over a decade I played with various creative styles of
interior, portrait, and wedding photography, which I found both
thoroughly enjoyable and, thanks to my perfectionist tendency, extremely
stressful. To balance that, photographing in wild and natural spaces,
although requiring a lot of physical energy, was always nourishing and
rejuvenating for me.
Life events and my wellbeing eventually determined that I ease my
pace and I came to focus purely on selling my fine art and nature stock
photography via my online gallery and exhibitions.
Equal to my
enjoyment in wrangling light into stories is my fondness for wrangling
words into images which, over the years, has found expression via my
'Breathspace pic of the week’ (a slightly erratic, sort-of-weekly
e-prezzie) and a work-in-progress titled ‘Life Light’ — a mingling of my
delight in words, pictures, drawings, and natural wisdoms.
In recent years I've shifted away from digital work and have taken up illustration in traditional ink and watercolour.
Inspiration
comes to me from so many varied sources — mainly in the natural world
although I’m always looking to create something new, something that
either conveys the emotion of the time and place or evokes a unique
emotion in the viewer, something that hasn’t been done in quite the same
way before. And I am compellingly drawn to beauty, and quirkiness, and
interestingness.
I currently live on a sea-breeze-swept
mountainside of the Cape Peninsula with no cats or dogs, which
means frequent visits from porcupines and the odd mongoose, field mice,
loads of birds and some rare encounters with tiny klipspringers.
My artworks have been displayed in various group art exhibitions and art fairs around South Africa and online.
What makes me go "ooh!", "aHh..." & "yum!"?
Even when we're not able to do all the things we love, our enjoyment
and appreciation of them is still present, and so I thoroughly enjoy
hiking, kloofing, boulder hopping, rock climbing, tree climbing, tree
planting, tree hugging, hugging people, marvelling at wild flowers,
marvelling at wild animals, and at human nature, unzipping my tent at
dawn in a remote spot, writing (or doodling) with a fine pen on smooth
paper, swimming in wild places, swimming in a calm sea, surfing,
travelling with nothing but my pack and instincts, making plans then
spontaneously changing them, snowboarding on fresh powder, photographing
nature with a wide angle lens, photographing nature with a macro lens,
photographing people to show them their own intrinsic beauty, walking
barefoot, talking nonsense, reading inspiring literature, napping in a
hammock, hearing snippets of conversation by passers-by, watching just
about everything (occasionally even some television), learning about
anything, eating, drinking (rooibos, rooiwyn, and the fresh rooi
tannin-tinted mountain water of the Cape), enjoying friends, enjoying
solitude, running around madly, sitting quietly doing nothing, laughing
(especially at myself), experiencing life...
Thank
you for reading this little snippet about me. May you enjoy a sense of
breathspace while you browse, and please feel free to share your thoughts with me!