Before the rain

Before the rain. 2021.

This picture sits in the small gap between calm and change, when the sky has not yet decided whether it belongs to the storm or the evening light. The top of the frame is thick with blue cloud, pressing down and swallowing detail, while the lower edge opens into soft pastel orange and pink that feels almost fragile by comparison. The birds lift the whole scene out of pure weather study and into something more temporal, each one a small marker of direction and time. Their loose diagonal flight cuts across the colour boundary, tying the cool weight above to the warm glow below, and turning the sky into a quiet ledger of what is about to arrive.

70 mm • f/4.5 • 1/1600 sec, ISO 200

Melbourne city details 3

Melbourne city details 3. 2019

This frame is about the moment a building stops feeling solid and starts reading as a drawing, one long curve laid over a stack of straight lines. The lower facade tilts through the picture like a loose sheet of graph paper, while the tower above bends and repeats its dark blue bands, almost like a wave rolling across the skyline. Using a long lens flattens everything into one skin of glass and cladding, so the eye moves on rhythm rather than depth, following stripes, diagonals and repeating windows. It is a quiet celebration of how a corporate high-rise can, for a second, become nothing more than sky, pattern and a single sweeping line.

105 mm • f/2.8 • 1/3200 sec, ISO 64

City reflections III

City reflections III. 2022.

The building becomes a vertical sheet of graph paper, every pane a small square that catches a slightly different slice of sky. From a distance it reads as a single cool surface, yet the longer you look the more you notice the patchwork, curtains and reflections and empty offices tilting the blues and greys. Framing the tower hard to the left lets that grid breathe against a simple field of open sky, city density confronted with a strip of calm. The photograph is less about a specific building than about watching order and softness share the same wall, a quiet study in how architecture mirrors the weather passing in front of it.

50 mm • f/7.1 • 1/500 sec, ISO 125

Ice and flight

Ice and flight. 2021.

A stained pair of ice chests sit pressed against a huge concrete wall, the turquoise word “ice” the only clean accent in a field of grey. The scene feels almost abandoned, refrigeration units going slowly green while the ground darkens with damp. Three birds cut across the upper part of the frame, small and almost throwaway, yet they are the only genuinely living thing here, tiny punctuation marks above the blocky word that promises cold. The photograph holds that tension between stored chill and brief movement, a little street corner that could be utterly still if you had not arrived at the exact second something feathered decided to cross the wall.

4.2 mm • f/1.6 • 1/730 sec, ISO 32

Between lines

Between lines. 2019.

A single jet holds the centre of the frame, locked on its climb while two soft vertical bands close in from either side. The world that launched it is reduced to these vague columns of blur, as if the plane is passing through the last brackets of the ground before the sky takes over completely. The photograph plays with tension and stillness, freezing a fraction of a second into something that feels almost diagrammatic, a clean symbol for departure, direction and the thin corridor every journey moves through on its way out of view.

200 mm • f/4.0 • 1/1600 sec, ISO 100

Signal to a distant city.

Signal to a distant city. 2020.

A single navigation marker stands in the centre of the frame, its yellow and blue bands the only sharp punctuation in a field of soft water and sky. The long exposure has turned the bay into a flat sheet of tone, and the horizon into a faint line where a ghost of the city hangs in the mist. The piece sits between solitude and connection, using distance and empty space to ask what it means to be oriented toward a place that is present but barely seen, a whole skyline reduced to a memory sitting on the edge of a very quiet sea.

200 mm • f/2.8 • 30 sec, ISO 400

Port Melbourne 01

Port Melbourne 01. 2021

Four containers fill the frame like oversized colour blocks, corporate blues and a single strip of red worn down by salt and time. The light rakes in from the side and every dent, scuff and rust streak turns into drawing on the metal, while shadows from a nearby fence quietly grid the surface. At the bottom edge, weeds and grasses push up against all that manufactured order. This picture sits between branding and entropy, using repetition and tight framing to turn a Port Melbourne stack of freight into a kind of accidental mural about movement, labour and the way surfaces remember every journey.

70 mm • f/5.6 • 1/125 sec, ISO 64

The far pier

The far pier. 2018.

A single pier reaches out into a sea that has lost all texture, turned smooth by the long exposure until it feels more like mist than water. The shelter at the end glows quietly, a tiny pocket of human light set against a large field of blue and violet. Above, faint stars and soft bands of cloud slide across the sky, echoing the gentle gradation in the water below. This photograph lives on that thin edge between night and day, using distance and empty space to stretch out a feeling of quiet anticipation, like the last calm breath before a journey begins.

24 mm • f/5.6 • 3 sec, ISO 50

Pillars in the tide

Pillars in the tide. 2020.

The pier holds itself together with strict geometry while everything around it turns to blur. Thirty seconds smooth the sea into a sheet of pale smoke, erasing individual waves and leaving only a suggestion of movement at the base of the rust stained pillars. Streetlights and railings run in a straight, almost indifferent line toward the edge of the frame, a human structure pretending to be permanent while the water slowly works at its feet. This picture sits in that calm tension between stillness and erosion, using the soft sky and muffled sea to make the pier feel both solid and strangely fragile at the same time.

150 mm • f/18 • 30 sec, ISO 64

Folded facades

Folded facades. 2019.

Two buildings share the frame but refuse to sit neatly together. A pale grid of windows runs straight and orderly behind a sheet of glass that seems to ripple, bending its own set of stripes into a diagonal fold. At this focal length the city feels flattened, more like layered paper than concrete and steel, and the reflected patterns turn into something closer to drawing than documentation. The photograph lingers on that tension between control and distortion, where modern architecture becomes a stack of shifting lines rather than a fixed, dependable facade.

200 mm • f/2.8 • 1/1250 sec, ISO 64

After hour glow

After hour glow. 2019.

This scene is all about the way artificial light carves a little stage out of an ordinary carpark. The blank metal wall becomes a backdrop, its panels stacked like theatre flats, while the red stripe cuts through the frame like a held breath. The concrete glows a cold green, the far wall falls away into deep shadow, and the lone strip light hangs over the stairs as if waiting for someone who never arrives. It is a picture of an in between time, after closing and before morning, where the functional architecture of retail space briefly feels cinematic and strangely tender.

24 mm • f/5.6 • 1/4 sec, ISO 64

Street tree

Street tree. 2022.

This mural turns an ordinary brick wall into a kind of shrine for a single tree. The orange circle works like a halo or rising sun, wrapping tightly around the dense green canopy and separating it from the flat grid of painted blocks behind. Below, a dark band hints at a street or plinth, while the heavy sky presses in from above, adding a faint sense of weather and time to an otherwise constructed scene. I was drawn to the way this piece of street art quietly mimics a traditional landscape painting, yet sits in a completely urban setting, asking where nature really lives in the city.

18 mm • f/5.0 • 1/500 sec, ISO 125

After hours exit

After hours exit. 2020

A service exit becomes a small stage once the sun has gone. Blocks of muted green and grey stack across the wall like colour samples, cut by a single strip of harsh fluorescent light and the neat geometry of the stairs. The concrete path, the clipped grass and the abandoned trolley all feel oddly formal, as if everything has been placed and left to wait for something that never arrives. This quiet, dead-end corner of an ordinary building turns cinematic for a moment, holding that mix of emptiness and tension that sits between the working day and the deep night.

24 mm • f/5.6 • 2 sec, ISO 64

Snow, stone & silence

Snow, stone & silence. 2025

A small hut sits slightly off centre, its timber walls sunlit against a wide, clean sky. The ground is all texture, stone, scrub, and thin snow holding in the shaded pockets. In the foreground, meltwater gathers in quiet pools and threads through the moss, giving the scene its only softness. Notice how the water and rock lines keep returning you to the hut, like a held thought.

24mm • f/6.3 • 1/4000 • ISO 200

Silence between the stars

Silence between the stars. 2018.

A dead white tree stands lit like a stage prop in the paddock, its tangled limbs catching the light while the Milky Way drifts silently above. The long exposure turns the stars into a soft river and the grass into a quiet, luminous floor, so the tree feels caught between two timescales, human and cosmic. This photograph is less about astronomy than about endurance, a portrait of something long finished with leaves that is still stubbornly holding its place under a sky that never stops moving.

24 mm • f/2.8 • 30 sec • ISO 400

Soft curve, open sky

Soft curve, open sky. 2020.

A pale timber curve floats against a wide, almost empty sky, the building reduced to a single sweeping gesture and a handful of dark windows anchoring the bottom edge. I was interested in how little you need to suggest architecture, just a ribbon of vertical lines catching light and a shadow that bends with the form. The photograph sits somewhere between landscape and elevation drawing, inviting you to feel the calm of big sky space while noticing the quiet precision of the design.

70 mm • f/9 • 1/1600 sec • ISO 200

Stillness beneath the palm

Stillness beneath the palm. 2015.

Palm crowns lean over the edge of an infinity pool, their fronds doubled so cleanly in the surface that the real trees and their reflections almost trade places. The white villas sit half hidden behind the green, red roof tiles just catching the light, while the water holds a soft tint of sky and the faintest trace of movement. The scene sits on the edge of tropical heat and quiet luxury, a moment where time feels suspended, as if the whole place is pausing for one slow breath.

24 mm • f/8 • 1/320 sec, ISO 100

Waiting to depart

Waiting to depart. 2024.

A row of budget airliners sits nose to tail on a wet apron, their orange tails and engine covers cutting through a soft green cast that feels half memory, half fluorescent light. The repeating line of light poles and boarding gates pushes deep into the mist, like a quiet procession toward elsewhere, while reflections on the tarmac hold the colour of the sky in shallow puddles. It is a picture of in between time at the edge of departure, when the planes are ready but the world outside the glass is still, and the familiar promise of escape feels both mundane and strangely cinematic.

35 mm • f/3.2 • 1/1000 sec, ISO 640

What the tide keeps

What the tide keeps. 2019.

From above, the Ocean Grove shoreline becomes a slow gradient from pale sand to luminous turquoise, a soft band of rocks and weed marking the restless border where water is always editing the land. The footprints near the top of the frame sit close to the wash line, hinting at stories already half erased, while the submerged reef draws painterly shapes under the surface, like memories that refuse to completely disappear. The picture holds that quiet pause between wave sets, when the beach feels like it is breathing in before it decides what to keep and what to pull back into the sea.

8.8 mm • f/3.5 • 1/400 sec, ISO 100

Still rooms

Still rooms. 2025.

A wall of hotel windows repeats like a chord, each curtain drawn to a slightly different rhythm, while the blank grey panel beside them swallows light and detail. I liked the way the façade seemed to hold two moods at once, busy pattern pressed hard against quiet void, as if all the unseen lives behind the glass were shouldered up against a concrete silence. The little vents and ledges at the bottom edge become the only hints of scale, turning the whole scene into something closer to a diagram of privacy and absence than a straightforward architectural record.

50 mm • f/5.6 • 1/8000 sec, ISO 800