“I set out to find the place where I fit in, and decided to make my own worlds.”
I set out to find the place where I fit in, not to be seen. Not to be celebrated. Just to find the one thing I could be great at in a world that had spent a long time telling me I wasn’t quite right for any of it.
So with time, I decided to make my own worlds. Photography was the vehicle that took me there.
It all started with an irritation. Every time someone said, “They’re lovely pictures,” a part of me itched. I didn’t want pretty. I wanted pause. I wanted goosebumps. I wanted people to stop — and feel something.
I was the odd kid. Spent my days daydreaming, off in la la land. Too imaginative. Too intense. Too dreamy. Too sensitive. Too much — and somehow, never quite enough.
I didn’t speak much until I was around four. When I did, I mumbled. I was told constantly to speak up, but in my mind, I was speaking loudly. My words just never landed the way I thought they were.
My heart belonged to sport and performance for many years, but I never quite fit in.
My worlds belonged to quieter things — drawing, making, riding my bike, and my whole world for years; my teddy. There was one escape from the day, though, and it was through the way my Dad’s voice changed for every character when he read to me at bedtime; The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark.
I loved the way a story could lift off a page and take shape in the air, and I loved imagining what was happening visually in the book. Looking back, that was probably my first doorway into worldbuilding.
My first camera cost me fifty cents at a garage sale. An Instamatic. I felt completely unstoppable — right up until I discovered not a single photo I took was in focus, and film processing was expensive. I needed more pocket money.
Before I bought my own, I used to sneak into my parents’ study to click the shutter on Dad’s SLR camera. I didn’t understand the dials. I just loved the sound — that one clean click — and the feeling that something had been captured. He didn’t realise until half his film rolls came back black, and I got in SO much trouble every time.
Some things don’t change.
For most of my life, I believed the things people said about me. That I was too much. That the imagination was a problem. That the sensitivity needed toughening up.
What I didn’t know — couldn’t know yet — was that those exact things were quietly becoming the foundation of everything.
The imagination I was teased for?
That became the backbone of my art.
The sensitivity I was told to hide?
That’s why people trust me with their most tender seasons.
The way my brain zig-zagged and spiralled and wandered?
That became the architecture of every world I build now.
It took nearly two decades of professional art-making to realise I wasn’t chasing beautiful pictures at all. I was chasing connection.
The moment a parent cries seeing their child’s imagination reflected back at them.
The quiet breath someone takes when they see themselves — not as the world has labelled them, but as I am honoured to see them.
If you have a child who feels things deeply, dreams wildly, lives in their own imagination — I see them, I understand them, because I was them. The kid who was always looking for the place where they fit.
I don’t create fantasy worlds to decorate childhood. I build them to reflect what already lives inside your child. The magic they’ve spent years trying to tone down, tidy up, or tuck away.
I understand them — because I spent so much of my own life doing exactly the same.
I’ve been creating professionally since 2007.
Internationally Award-winning.
Based in Coffs Harbour, NSW, working with families across Australia and the world.
Every session is child-led, unhurried, and built around your story — not a template.
Nearly two decades of worlds built from scratch, one family at a time.
Dragons & Caffiene
There’s one more corner of this world worth knowing about.
Dragons & Caffeine is my studio shop — and it started as a quiet creative habit.
One image, one morning at a time.
Some mornings calm. Some loud. Some arriving before I was ready.
The prints are limited. The feeling is honest. And they’re for the days you feel capable — and the days you’re just holding the cup.
If something in you is saying “this is for us” — trust that.
That nudge is usually right.
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