About the Photographer
One of the things I love most about Photography is, it offers the opportunity to share an experience in a tangible way. And, while you can never capture a moment in its entirety, with the smells, sounds and tastes. A great photo can draw the viewer into the image allowing them to get a real sense of what it was like to be there in that moment. That is what this website is about. Sharing experiences and hopefully taking you somewhere you haven't been.
For the most part my camera only really comes out when I am travelling. There is something about the two that goes hand in hand and for me that is where I find most of my inspiration. Whether it’s riding a camel in the Sahara Desert, climbing Mt Fuji or just wandering through a street market in The Philippines, often a moment will captivate me and I’ll find myself lost in it, peering through the lens of my camera, happily snapping away.
Travel had been a huge dream of mine since I was a child. I desperately wanted to travel. I had posters and maps on my walls of all the countries I wanted to visit. I collected coins, read encyclopedia's (im showing my age now), and watched travel shows and documentaries. But, for some reason travel always felt like such a distant, unreachable dream.
Not long after my 23rd birthday I decided if I was ever going to travel it would be up to me to make it happen. Waiting around hoping that an airplane ticket was going to fall out of the sky clearly wasn’t the answer. At the time the only thing I owned of any value was my car (well technically it wasn’t mine, the bank owned it) and I decided to put it up for sale and buy a one way ticket to London.
It was such an energizing, free feeling to finally make a decision to do something I had always dreamed of doing. It was a huge risk and as scared as I was it felt like it was the right thing to do.
Ironically enough less than a month later an airline ticket did fall out of the sky, well, two tickets actually and $2500 spending money. I won a contest on a National radio station, to meet Moby at the Werchter Music Festival in Belgium. I had three weeks to sell all of my worldly possessions, jump on a plane and head to the other side of the world.
I decided when I left New Zealand not to place any time limit on my travels. I figured that I would return home when I was tired of moving around or when the money ran out. If it was a month or a year I didn't mind I was just happy to finally have the chance to travel.
Nearly 16 years and more than 100 countries later and I still get excited by the thought of travelling somewhere new. People say that travel can be addictive, I’m not sure if that’s true but there is something about it that makes me feel more alive than just about anything else. Don’t get me wrong sometimes it sucks; when you are in the middle of a strange country and you are sick and tired and you just want to go home. But then there are times of pure exhilaration and joy, when you find yourself lost in a moment, and time stands still. The space opens up between your thoughts and you are left standing there in awe of the world around you.
