The back story …

From the time I decided to add a blog page to my website, I made the decision to tell the story of my life through my photography journey and the images created at each pinnacle stage.

So much of my life has been entwined with my intense thirst to become the best photographer I possibly could, as quickly as I could.

Before I knew it, photography had become the compass of my life.

My children and photography are my life.

And so it begins… my lifelong love affair with photography, my beloved career, and the very core of my identity.

Through a twist of fate, while pregnant with my second child, I was gifted my first SLR camera — a Pentax with a Sigma lens.

At that point, I was a stay-at-home mum, 25 years old, and married to the love of my life, Mickey.

We had a newborn baby boy, whom I had nearly died carrying, and a three-year-old little girl.

Mickey, a six-foot-four civil engineer and surfer, worked in Sydney at the Forestry Commission, and we lived contentedly on a tight budget in our brand-new home. Every day as a mum was a happy little adventure, and when money allowed, I could purchase one roll of black-and-white film. It felt like such a luxury to buy that roll of film, and it was so exciting to have it processed.

The image above is from one of the very first rolls of film I ever shot. It is of Jimi Axl, photographed at Scarborough Beach, Perth, Western Australia.

At this fledgling stage of my career, I had no real technical skills to speak of. In fact, I didn’t even realise I could turn off the on-camera flash.

What I did have, however, was an innate sense of timing, coupled with a talent for instinctively identifying moments as they passed by my lens, allowing me to capture them with ease. It was a very exciting time, full of discovery.

I took my rolls of film to a local professional lab to be developed, and one day the owner took me aside and said, “Nicole, you should become a professional photographer.”

I will never forget that moment. I didn’t feel complimented; I felt confused. I simply smiled and said nothing. As I walked my children home, the comment whirled around in my mind. My reasoning stated, loud and clear: I can’t be a professional photographer — I am a mother!

Whatever this thing is that people have referred to as “talent” when they look at the images I have produced over the years has been present since the very first roll of film I shot, and I am ashamed to say I gave it little regard.

I couldn’t see it then, but I was deeply passionate about my children and those organic, fleeting moments that could never be repeated as they grew and thrived. For some reason, I have always carried an awareness that the clock is ticking — a knowing that moments disappear swiftly.

Now, when I look back, I see all that I took for granted, and I am profoundly grateful that I have every image and every memory these photographs spark.