Hi, I am Wanita

Let's capture your Life Reel

I love when you listen to a song and, somehow, it paints an entire picture in your head.

You can see the people. The place. The time of day. You create this whole story around the circumstances that must have led to that song being written.

For years, Brown Eyed Girl did that for me. In my head, it was a high-school romance — summer, a grandstand, a brown-eyed girl and a memory someone carried with them long enough to eventually write a song about it.

Then I watched a Van Morrison documentary and discovered that wasn't the story at all.

Devastating. 😂

But I realised that maybe the real story didn't matter. The song had already created a memory in my head for a life I'd never actually lived.

And I think that's what I've always loved about photography.

I'm not particularly interested in perfectly placed people, everyone looking at the camera and smiling on cue.

I notice the other stuff.

The glance between two people. A little hand wrapped around Mum's finger. Hair blowing across someone's face. Kids running wild. Bare feet. Crinkled noses. The moment immediately before the photo you thought you wanted — and the one immediately after it.

I want to photograph enough of those little pieces that when you flick through your images, it feels less like looking at a photoshoot and more like watching a life reel.

I want you to remember what the sun felt like on your face.

I want you to almost smell the grass and the flowers, feel the breeze that was blowing your hair and hear the belly laugh behind the smiling face.

And these days, photography and another part of my life have collided.

Bowen Flower Farm.

Our farm has become one of my favourite places to photograph — rows of flowers, long grass, dirt tracks, open paddocks and that beautiful North Queensland golden light.

It's imperfect, constantly changing and a little bit wild.

Which, as it turns out, is exactly how I like my photographs too.

So come as you are.

Let the kids run. Pick the flowers. Get your dress dirty. Walk through the grass. Get in the water if that's where the light takes us.

I'll worry about the photographs.

You just live it.

And years from now, I hope those photographs take you right back there.

Your people. Your story. Your life reel.