Women - get in the picture. Please.

May 9, 2020

I just fell down a serious rabbit-hole on Facebook…

We’ve all been there. It happens. But this feels bigger than just a FB scroll-hole experience to me…

FB showed me my ‘memories’ - a photo taken on this day 7 years ago. It’s a selfie taken with my husband Mark and our then 4mo baby boy, Aiden. Our first baby. Back when it felt like WE were babies. And then it offered me to ‘see more memories’.. and boy, did I bite…

I sat. I scrolled. I oohed. I ahhh-ed. I remembered. And loved, and laughed and - as cheesy and gross as it sounds - I even shed a tear.

My favourite pictures were the ones where I was in a HUGE state of growth and change - when both my babies were still growing inside me, and I had NO IDEA what lay ahead…! I can remember the place they were taken - just selfies on my phone - and what I was feeling, and thinking, and hoping, and fearing… I remember how big I thought I was, and I look now with nothing but awe and appreciation for my body which grew 2 healthy, strong, living babies…

My point is - women, GET IN THE PICTURE. You’ve probably heard me say this a couple of times before, I’m kind of annoying like that. But truly, your favourite pictures are THE ONES YOU TAKE. Not the perfect ones, not the styled ones, not the overly-posed-everything-is-so-perfect-in-our-lives-right-now ones. They’re the messy, real, raw ones that - years from now, when they’re served up as your ‘memories’ - you’ll tear-up looking at them. Because they take you back to a time you want to re-visit. At the time the picture is going to be taken - you’ll need to be strong, your first impulse will be to say NO - my hair isn’t right, I don’t have makeup on, I’m still carrying that extra 4 kilos since blah-blah, etc etc…

This Sunday is Mother’s Day. Some of the social restrictions we’ve made into our new normal these last 6 weeks have finally been eased. You have the opportunity to see people you love this weekend. GET IN THE PICTURE. Go nuts. Take loads of photos, don’t delete any of them. Keep them. Treasure them. Re-visit them.

I promise, there’s a future you who will thank you for it.

What I wouldn’t give for another day with my Grandmother. You best believe I would move heaven and earth for a picture of me and her together where we looked happy, like we were just having fun, being together.

“One day, all your children will have is pictures of you. Make sure you’re in them. It doesn’t matter what your hair looks like, your makeup or your body. They won’t care about any of that. They’ll just want to see you”

For all of you celebrating this Sunday - Happy Mother’s Day. Eat the cake. Drink the wine. Take lots of photos. Enjoy it all xx

With love and light,

Fiona xxx

The End of Busy - business suspended, self-isolation and social distancing - staying sane in a world gone mad…

April 13, 2020

I’ve been numb.

I’ve been avoiding. I’ve been reading, crying, playing with my kids. I’ve been full of false bravado, binge-watching news articles and death tolls, I’ve been day-drinking and napping and distracting.

It’s been exhausting.

Normally (back in The Good Old Days a month ago), I have breakfast out on our back deck, which is surrounded by beautiful gardens and birds and butterflies, nature is my re-charge space. But usually I ‘double-down’ and take the opportunity while I’m eating to check my emails, read that article i’ve been wanting to catch up on, finish the next module of that course I bought, or listen to my favourite speaker on podcast. Not really enjoying my breakfast. Not really giving my full attention to the other thing i’m doing. Certainly not really enjoying our beautiful garden.

But today, I did.

I ONLY ate my breakfast. No book, podcast, email or course. No notes to be written before they’re forgotten, no thoughts that were already elsewhere. I purposely did NOTHING and focused on just BEING. And it was the first moment of real joyfulness I’ve felt in a long time.

When all of this current Covid craziness first reared its ugly head (well, for us anyway) back in February, it seemed like a bit of an inconvenience to business as usual. It then grew into a giant pain in the ass. Then it became a nightmare, the stuff that keeps you awake at 3am wondering if you have a will in place. I moved very quickly from a space of dismissal, to incredulity to full-blown fear. My personal take on fear is that ‘that’s not for me’ or ‘I can beat that’ so I quickly countered the fear with a PLAN - I would take the time that had been handed to me forcibly - away from my work which is my entire heart and soul - and I would continue to create, despite it all, I would rise above and keep myself busy filling a need for others, yes!! Surely there were people out there who, faced with the prospect of being stuck indoors with nothing to do, would want to learn some new skills that I could teach, or have questions I could answer?? And there was my escape plan - I would make myself BUSY. And so far I have done everything except that.

I now think that being busy is part of the problem as to why we’re here now. No, I’m not going to lurch into a political rant here. I’m not pretending to know a damn thing. But I know that what makes me really good at my work is that I allow myself to FEEL very deeply. I feel other people’s emotions. It took me a LOOOONG time to own that, and even longer to be able to say it without feeling incredibly uncomfortable. But there it is. I allow myself to feel it all, and in the studio, it’s what lets me get inside of people’s real, authentic space and see their insecurities and hold that tension for them so that they can let down their guard so I can capture the real moments that happen within. But my superpower is also my Achille’s Heel. I have spent the last two weeks diving in and out of the deep end of feeling absolutely everything to numbing myself so I don’t have to feel anything. And after doing this for a while, here’s what I’ve brought back with me…

We’ve been so busy keeping ourselves so busy with the deadlines at work, with choosing between 6 different varieties of tomato sauce, and with what’s happening on that reality show or falling down the scroll-hole of other people’s social media lives - that we’ve stopped paying attention to our back garden. Our country. Our life. Our planet. Yesterday I read that the Himalayan mountains were visible from Jaipur for the first time in over 30 years, and that there’ve been dolphins seen in the canals of Venice - because we’ve all just STOPPED.

Surely if we allow ourselves - outside of our regular work and distractions - to simply stop and really FEEL the affects of destroying our forests, of climate change, of over-population, of the imbalance in our society where 1% hoard billions while others starve - we can no longer accept all this as the small part of ‘business as usual’ that we give our left-over attention to at the end of our very busy day.

I’ve seen lots of posts on social media saying about how now’s the perfect time to do that course, up-skill, write that book, learn a language. And hey, you do you. That really appealed to me at first. But now I think I want to do the exact opposite. I want to slow down. Be still. Sit, look, listen and feel. Breathe it all in. Go inside myself and ask how I can really live in a way that serves not just my own ambitions and desires and agenda’s, but that truly helps to create the world I dream of living in. The one I want my children to inherit, one where they have a chance to grow and thrive and enjoy.

I’ve been photographing people for over 20 years. Us photographers are a funny bunch, we’re drawn in to other people’s stories, and come into people’s lives at very intimate times - when there’s huge amounts of growth, when they’re joining their lives together in marriage, when they’re creating a new family, when that family is growing and changing, when they’re going through transformational change, and when they’re experiencing crushing losses. Thats where we come in. We tell the story of that time in pictures, anchor those memories of that moment in something real, raw and beautiful to be visited again and again. Over all that time, witnessing all those stories, outside of age and race and culture, I can tell you that ALL of us want the same things - safety for our families and the people we love, a sense of purpose and value in this life, and to truly be seen. Normally, these things get a lower listing behind the bigger priorities of deadlines, decisions and ‘everyday life’, but now our everyday life looks very, very different.

I can’t imagine what will come after this. Currently the talk is that we’ll all be on lockdown until November, and I’m struggling to imagine the reality of that, let alone what it will look like when things ‘go back to normal’. Maybe this is the chance to re-define what parts of normal we actually want to go back to.

I miss my work. I miss my studio. I miss hearing the stories of the people I get to create with, we’re not made for social isolation, and my normal is to go deep, I detest small talk and splashing in the shallow end. If you’ve read this far, I guess you know that about me by now. I am so incredibly GRATEFUL to be in a safe, beautiful space surrounded by my family and for all the things we have at our disposal - it’s a level of luxury (oh, the absolute decadence of perpetually fully stocked grocery shelves!!) that I’m sure we none of us will take for granted ever again. And I’m sure the time will come that I’ll want to be busy again, and I’ll be itching to create something new and different, but that time isn't now, and I’m going to be patient and kind to myself in allowing this jumble of feelings and knowings to have its way with me. I’m choosing not to be busy right now, not to show up for anyone other than me, to give myself permission to feel it all, the horror and the confusion and the quiet and the loneliness… I’m going to learn more about not being distracted by being busy, and instead simply BE.

And when the desire returns to create, and get busy, I think it will come from somewhere much deeper, and truer in intention.

However you’re currently handling this shit-show, please be kind to yourself. There are no ‘shoulds’ anymore, we get to make new rules and we’ve got time to think on exactly what that can look like. Let’s dare to dream of creating a way of living that is truly, unapologetically beautiful 🖤

Sending love to you all, stay sane keep well, hang in there…. Here’s hoping I’ll see you again real soon.

With love & light, Fiona xx

Phoenix Rising - flames, cancer and lots of heart. So 2020, here you are.

January 23, 2020

And just like that, January is almost gone…

Every year it starts the same - the collective sigh of relief that Christmas is done, the blur of days leading up to New Years when it’s perfectly acceptable to drink cocktails in the morning and no one seems to know or care what day it is, then the fireworks, the resolutions and the targeted ads in your inbox for your local gym and fitness centre. If you’re lucky, you carve out a bit of time away, although holidays with very young children can feel more like an endurance marathon at times, same challenges as at home, but with less convenience.

This is generally how it goes for us too. We normally camp at Straddie if we can, take some time to decompress, carve out some goals for the year ahead, and simply just BE. It’s a beautiful thing.

Except this year, for us, and most folks I know, it’s gone a little differently.

If you weren’t personally affected by the fires, you know and love someone who is. Or, just simply couldn’t escape the daily devastation as shown across all forms of media. It felt almost callous to be thinking of a relaxing holiday when folks - and so, SO many animals - were literally fighting just to survive.

We spent our ‘down time’ moving house. Yet again. My husband Mark calculated that it’s our 12th move over 3 international destinations in the last 10 years. To say we’re both expert level packers and movers and So. Incredibly. Over. It. simultaneously is an epic understatement. *sigh* But, we are now in a place that truly feels like us. That works for our family in a way that our previous homes haven’t and that is surrounded by the most glorious garden full of mature trees and wildlife that my forest-dwelling fairy-soul loves completely. We are home.

And, just last week, my Mum had surgery to remove both her breasts to stop the spread of her cancer.

I’ve seen the ravages of this surgery before. I’ve heard from the too-many warrior women who’ve come through my studio about their experience through this fire. I always proclaimed that come the day I should be diagnosed, my choice would be for this surgery, and my life ahead. Damn the scars and the ravages of war.

It is one thing to think that in an academic, far-off, one-day kinda way. It is something else entirely to see your own mother recovering from this surgery. With a body that is foreign, unfamiliar and so obviously wearing the affects of what can only be described as violence. And, the really shitty thing is, we ALL know this woman.

I love being a woman. I love my body (it’s a work in progress, but I’m learning every day and I’m damn thankful for what I’ve got) and I love my breasts. I don’t ever want to be in the situation where I have to choose this surgery to save my life. And I don’t want that for my daughter, or yours. For any of us.

I want to do something. Something to both raise money for this cause, and to help women see, love and celebrate their bodies more, now. In all their imperfect perfection.

I’m putting together something where - in exchange for a donation to a particular breast cancer charity that operates here locally - I will give my time and expertise in the form of a photoshoot and imagery. I would love to create this as an opportunity where women who’ve always wanted to step into a space of self-love and self-confidence can have the kind of shoot where maybe the focus is on loving, accepting and celebrating their body. I haven’t nutted out the details yet, this is all new, but I’m working on it now.

If you know of anyone who I should reach out to to help put this together, PLEASE drop me a line.

Mum is doing ok. I think it will be a long road ahead to approach healing, acceptance and peace. Through it all, I see strength. I see hope. I see love.

Part of my bent in being a photographer is that I want to truly see people. I detest small talk, I want to go deep. I want to know people’s stories, and not just the highlights reel. I connect easily with those who’ve been through their fair share of shit and popped out the other side all the wiser for it.

In everything I do, and in all the challenges that come my way, I seek the lesson. And I think that - for me - this January has been about the Phoenix, rising from the literal ashes.

Our nation, though hurt, has grown closer. We are one. The flames have burnt away old ways of thinking and doing and being, and will hopefully allow new growth to take its place. Let the rains continue to heal our land.

My family has seen big changes too, and we are stronger for it, closer and more appreciative of all we have. There’s nothing like loss to show you how to be grateful.

I wanted this space to be a place of stories, and inspiration and beauty. I’m not sure how this very first entry qualifies, except to say that now you know a bit more about my story. And if you’re here, reading along, then we’re in a space together where I can say - please love your body. Love your home. Call your Mum. Let the ‘clean slate’ mentality of January serve to shift your focus to all that you already have. Us girls are terribly hard on ourselves, let’s try instead to rise from the ashes of our old ways, and emerge a new bird, freer and lighter (and more beautiful for it) than before.

with Love & Light, Fiona xx