Quick Picks – Featuring a sea of clouds, living sculptures, and notes in Berlin

---

I’ve been thinking about travel a bit lately, so this week’s quick pick of internet finds highlights just some of the places on my wanderlust wish list. As usual, good things come in threes…

Barek Art Timelapse

One of the really exciting things about the move away from full-time professional photography has been the way it’s prompted me to plan and create things without thinking about how I might be able to use them to encourage bookings. Now I’m doing work purely because I want to, which is liberating. It’s also encouraging me to explore areas of photography that I’ve long admired but not delved into. As always I’m taking opportunities wherever I can, and still adhering to the principle that if you don’t ask, you don’t get.

Which is how I ended up spending a Saturday afternoon in Room for Living, a home wares store in Woolloongabba, watching a Brisbane-based artist, Barek, create an original piece directly on their walls, as my camera clicked away. The result is this time-lapse video.

Quick Picks – featuring papier mache pandas, drinkable books and dandelion lamps.

---

Look, Quick Picks is back! It’s now shorter, and possibly a little sweeter, but still full of my latest internet finds. And as always, good things come in threes…

A Lost World

One Sunday morning earlier this year we decided that a road trip was in order. So we pulled out our map and started planning. As soon as I saw the words “Lost World” I knew it was where we would end up. It’s a valley situated behind the Lamington National Park in the Gold Coast hinterland. I’ve been to surrounding areas numerous times, but somehow this little gem had previously escaped me.

It was a gorgeous day, so we put the top down and set off armed with our cameras. It’s such a beautiful place, that by the end of the day I was seriously trying to rationalise the substantial daily commute that would be involved if we moved here. Maybe one day…

Well, well, what have we here then?

A few months have passed since I posted about our intention to step back from the world of wedding photography, and wind down that side of our business. Those few months have been a time of transition. I’ve produced and delivered the last of our clients’ albums. I’ve spent time overseas. I’ve continued to separate out and wrap up that side of the business. I’ve returned to the career I held for the 10 years before my foray into the world of wedding photography. But most importantly, I’ve been able to step back and reflect on the last few years and consider where I want to go from here.

The last few years have been amazing. Not amazing in an “everything is perfect and comes complete with rainbows and unicorns” kind of way. But amazing in the crazy mix of ups, downs, and completely unexpected opportunities they involved. I learnt that my expectations of what was involved in running a business were way off. Way, way off. It was so much more intense than I had expected. It was hard and enormously stressful in ways I could never have grasped without doing it. But at the same time it was inspiring, rewarding, and fulfilling in a way that I don’t think working for someone else can ever be.

I also learnt that being a really happy, stable couple that has successfully made interstate and international moves, bought homes, and made massive life decisions together doesn’t mean the two of you are compatible as business partners or even as workmates.

And I learnt that surprising things can happen if you ask the right questions. A beautiful girl might overcome her terror of frogs and wade waist-deep into a dam.

You might get to stand on a beach in Thailand as a groom arrives at his wedding ceremony on an elephant.

A friend might wrangle a giant red balloon on a very windy, and very busy beach.

All for the sake of a photograph or two.

I’m so happy that we took the risks involved in trying it out, seeing if it was something that would become the job that we both stuck with into the future. I’m also happy that we both have the self-awareness to have realised that it wasn’t, and the sense to step away from it, putting the reality of “us” above the dream of working for ourselves.

But the big question is where to from here. And the answer is, that honestly, at this point, I’m not entirely sure. And that’s ok.

What I do know is that the last two years have cemented photography as a part of my life. So Shy Fox Photography will continue to be my creative outlet. It will sit alongside the life that happens between 9 and 5, Monday to Friday, occasionally intersecting as I walk past something that just calls out to be photographed, or as I take time out in a coffee shop to write a blog post or plot out a project idea. Co-existing, as I use my evenings, weekends and days off to plan and do shoots, and to share my work. I’m not quite sure yet how that will play out, but I’m looking forward to finding out. And I’d love you to stick around and enjoy the adventure with me.

Pav