21 From ’21 | A Snapshot of 2021 {Avon Valley, Wheatbelt & Perth Wedding, Family, Event & Commercial Photographer}

As the year draws to a close, I’d like to thank all the amazing couples, families, businesses and government organisations that have supported my business, and helped make 2021 so enjoyable and successful for me.

As we plough through our second year of a worldwide pandemic, it’s interesting to reflect on the changes it has brought to both our everyday lives, and our livelihoods.  As a photographer, I’ve seen wedding bookings slow, with couples remaining cautious about planning a big event which could be cancelled at the last minute.  The same goes for events, although many of the smaller ones have gone ahead, and I did shoot the GWN Dowerin Machinery Field Days in August, which was the biggest event I’ve covered to date, and besides being completely exhausting, a huge success!

But family shoots remain popular, and the wedding gaps have been filled nicely with commercial and tourism based work, most of which tends to fall during the week, leaving many of my weekends free, which has been a nice change!

So I’ve spent a large part of the year working with businesses, and travelling through the regions shooting our amazing Wheatbelt towns and communities, to promote local tourism within WA.  And given my background in agriculture and love of the Wheatbelt and farming communities, it’s pretty much been a dream come true for me, and definitely something I hope to do more of in the future.  

So following are 21 images that I feel best represent both my style, and the people and places I’ve worked with throughout 2021. Just a random mix of weddings, families, events, commercial and tourism work, which I feel incredibly honored to have been part of – and all thanks to you, my fabulous clients! 

Have a wonderful Christmas and New Year, and I’ll see you all again in 2022!

The Wheatbelt Way | A Road Trip | May 2018 {Avon Valley & Wheatbelt Documentary Photographer}

With my Autumn weddings done and dusted, I took the opportunity for a three day Roadie earlier this week, heading north-east to the shire of Mt Marshall on the edge of the Wheatbelt, where the Emu Proof Fenceline divides our farmland from station country.  

Late Autumn is such a beautiful time of the year out there.  The days are warm and still, the flies are (mostly!) gone, and the evenings cool.  But it's also the driest time of the year, normally following a long hot Summer, and before the first rains of Winter settle the dust and germinate the newly sown crops. 

Founded on a nomadic pastoral industry, which later included the cutting of sandalwood, the Shire of Mt Marshall takes in the tiny towns of Bencubbin and Beacon, running north to the Emu Proof Fenceline. Nowadays it mostly consists of vast areas of flat, open cropping country, pockets of bush teaming with native flora and fauna, long straight gravel roads, the remnants of small settlements, and some very large rocks.

So, armed with my Fuji XPro2 + 18-135mm lens, plus a few other essentials, like food, water, my coffee machine and a Wheatbelt Drive Trail Map, I headed east to the Beacon Caravan Park, to set up camp - ever conscious of the fact that I was going to be far more comfortable in my Donga than my great great great grandfather JS Roe would have been, when he first discovered and explored this country in 1836! 

  And for the next three days I drove long distances, trekked through bush, climbed rocks with easy to spell names names like Billiburning, Elachbutting and Beringbooding, and watched farmers kick up trails of dust across the landscape with their seeding machines.  I also walked through towns (both existing and extinct), and met a few of the locals, including Bruce and Mal, who offered me a stiff cup of black tea and a rollie, and took me through the Beacon Men's Shed, and a short history of the tractor in Australia. 

But mostly I just hung out on my own.  Sometimes it's good to just quiet the chaos, to switch off and celebrate the simple things in our own backyard. That's what this trip was all about for me. And maybe a little bit about taking photos too, because, well, that's just what I do!