Hi, Nicole here. This is a little behind the scenes info on this project, to provide some context for you to enjoy the imagery more closely.

This documentary piece, Strange Beauty, was created during the Canon Light Awards Grand Final shoot challenge. It was supported by Tourism Tasmania and it was a 24-hour shoot challenge. The brief was to create an engaging photographic series of four photographs that share the spirit of a Tasmania less well known in an offbeat and unexpected way.

My approach to building a complex story is to search first for an interesting glimmer to explore and expand on and then drawing those threads together. It’s important to research, observe and then find a way to visually connect the people, communities and landscape that you encounter.

I saw my first glimmer talking to my guide from Tourism Tasmania, and she was telling me a story about growing up, having family beach holidays in this little place called Surveyors Bay. And back in the day, some local families had knocked up these little beach shacks on crown land. And she said because, well, no one was using that land. And I got my first sense of the heart of the story, this kind of open, frontier attitude; This unique humour and Tasmanian history.

The next story glimmer that I developed was a little sushi shop in a small town of Geeveston – Masaaki’s Sushi shop. And people come from all over the country to visit this place. And so I drove there and found him in his kitchen with Japanese music floating about and he was prepping salmon for the next day service after having a huge day. We chatted while he sharpened his knives and he talked about how much he loves his life there and the surf breaks and the great produce, and he’d been up since 3:00 AM cooking and he’s still offered to tour us around his new shop premises across the road and share his plans about what’s coming next.

And as we entered this new shop, I had this visual flashback to the set of the movie Dogville, the way that the story managed to fill the stark spaces so fully. It was the same feeling here. And so that’s where we captured the portrait.

Thanks for taking the time to listen in today. If you’d like to chat about your upcoming projects with me, please call me or e-mail me through my contact page. Love to hear from you.