User talk:Beclaire37
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IT’S ALWAYS DIFFICULT TALKING ABOUT YOURSELF…
It would be nice to begin by mentioning how I come from a long line of bohemian artists … but that’s not quite true.
I’m a first born, a child of the mid 70′s, a son of the suburbs. My father was a bank manager and my mother was your typically devoted domestic engineer. I was born in Sydney’s Western Suburbs, raised in South East Queensland, and I live in Melbourne Inner North – home for me is anywhere along Australia’s East Coast. I have a brother who is a primary school teacher, a shaper of little minds and I have a sister who implements humanitarian projects in some of the darkest parts of the world. I take photographs.
I haven’t always been a Melbourne Photographer. I use to be a chef, but unfortunately I was never offered my own TV show, and so I decided it was time for a change. When my father passed away in the mid 90s I inherited his vintage fox lined leather gloves and his Nikon FM2. Aesthetically, it was a beautiful piece of equipment, strictly hands off when I was growing up, and completely beyond my rudimentary understanding of photography. However, in inheriting it I was determined to master it, if only in the hope that I might inherit a small part of my father’s view of the world along the way.
By the time I was accepted into the VCA in 2002 I had given myself over entirely to photography. I had begun to imagine that life was a series of loosely related 6″x4″s . In 2005 I completed my BFA (Photography). I flirted with food and architecture photography for a few years, without any real success, before a chance encounter in 2008 led me to meeting Matt and Nic Bugden, who simply said “We’re getting married in a couple of months and we’re looking for a non wedding photographer”. I had my first clients.
I’m not sure if their decision to book me was born of desperation or courage, but it proved to be a watershed moment for me. I quickly realised that there was a need for the kind of work I was producing; that I could be a photographer of weddings without being a “wedding photographer”. It wasn’t all immediate success – there was a ton of hard graft and a lot of quiet months, but I appreciate the busy times now all the more for it. And I still approach every wedding with the same excitement, planning and respect that I did that first Saturday in December 08. It may sound cliched, but each commission really is an honour; it validates both my work as an artist and me as a person.
I’m approaching 2012 with unprecedented excitement. For the first time I’m trading under my own name, shedding my previous nom de plume, Blackbird Photography. It’s not a big change, but an important one nonetheless, a bit like trapeze artist performing without a net for the first time. In 2 days we move house in anticipation of the birth of our second child in May. And with the first half of the year almost fully booked, and the second half filling up fast, its sure to be my busiest year yet. Bring it on.
