Cathartic Camera Photography

I strive to combine technical expertise with creativity to produce images that not only document events, but also tell a story.

[Cathartic Camera Photography @Catharticcamera]

Three hours into performing and still completely in it. Maracas, costume, grin unchanged. Boundary Street Festival 2014. Some people make the photograph for you.

[Cathartic Camera Photography @Catharticcamera]

Gold headdresses, street lighting, and frames that looked designed rather than found. Boundary Street Festival 2014. Get out of the way of what is already working.

[Cathartic Camera Photography @Catharticcamera]

Blue feathers, warm street light, a smile aimed at someone entirely off-camera. Boundary Street Festival 2014. The image landed exactly where it needed to.

[Cathartic Camera Photography @Catharticcamera]

Capoeira on a closed street, one body inverted, ring of twenty people standing still around them. Pre-visualisation, not reaction. Boundary Street, 2014.

[Cathartic Camera Photography @Catharticcamera]

Boundary Street Festival, West End, 2014. Three dancers, three expressions of the same joy. The costumes do not require you to manufacture anything.

[Cathartic Camera Photography @Catharticcamera]

Four frames in thirty seconds. Three were unusable. The one that worked came in the gap between sentences.

[Cathartic Camera Photography @Catharticcamera]

Metered off the face, let the red blow wherever it wanted. The camera disagreed. The camera was wrong.

[Cathartic Camera Photography @Catharticcamera]

Green smoke, blue smoke, amber footlights — the room had already made every creative decision. My job was to not override them.

[Cathartic Camera Photography @Catharticcamera]

The hat angle was decided at home. The photograph is just confirmation of a choice already made.

[Cathartic Camera Photography @Catharticcamera]

The best nightlife portraits arrive in the two seconds after people stop noticing you. Everything before that is just waiting.

[Cathartic Camera Photography @Catharticcamera]

The best nightlife portraits arrive in the two seconds after people stop noticing you. Everything before that is just waiting.

[Cathartic Camera Photography @Catharticcamera]

Someone arranged those lotus flowers over hours before the festival opened. Photographing them took thirty seconds. The photograph holds the care, not the time.

[Cathartic Camera Photography @Catharticcamera]

Fan at peak arc, smile fully open, altar gold behind her — Southbank, Brisbane, 2015. The frame where every element of the festival arrived at once.

[Cathartic Camera Photography @Catharticcamera]

Four dancers, four pink parasols, the same angle in the same moment — Southbank, Brisbane, 2015. That synchrony takes years. The photograph takes half a second.

[Cathartic Camera Photography @Catharticcamera]

She turned away from the audience mid-performance, Brisbane 2015. The trailing sleeve made the photograph. The cherry blossom branch in her raised hand was the discovery afterwards.

[Cathartic Camera Photography @Catharticcamera]

Father and daughter, both holding the Indian flag at the Musgrave Park celebration. He is there for the occasion. She is still figuring out what the flag actually is.

[Cathartic Camera Photography @Catharticcamera]

Pink shawl against a crowd of faces, subject turned away. The back-of-head portrait places the viewer alongside the subject rather than in front of them. It is underused.

[Cathartic Camera Photography @Catharticcamera]

Two girls in the same routine: the older one is already holding her form. The younger one is just dancing. That gap — before discipline becomes conscious — is the photograph.

[Cathartic Camera Photography @Catharticcamera]

Arms raised, head back, one second of full extension in a twenty-minute sequence. Black and white because the costume becomes architecture without the colour competing for attention.

[Cathartic Camera Photography @Catharticcamera]

She was watching the stage. The child was watching everything else. The split attention is the photograph — and it required them both to forget the camera was there.