About
A scientist's eye, turned on the people you love.
I spent years as a molecular biologist before portraiture took over my life. The habits never left: I observe first, I study how a family works, what you mean to each other and where the real moments happen, and then I build the session around what I've seen. It's why I direct rather than pose. Posed people look like they're waiting for it to be over. Directed people look like themselves.
Five Castles Portraits is my heritage studio, run from Belgrave in the Dandenong Ranges. It's deliberately small: one family at a time, three unhurried meetings, and artwork I put my name on. I'm an award-winning portrait photographer, but the award that matters most hangs in someone's loungeroom and gets looked at every day.
“I document the relationships and I help my clients celebrate what they value most in life: the people they love and the animals they care about.”
There's a generation of photographs going missing. We take thousands of pictures on our phones and display none of them; they sink under two years of screenshots and are gone. One day a grandchild will ask to see the photographs, and the honest answer will be that they lived on a device nobody can open any more.
That's the problem this studio exists to solve. A portrait that's artisan printed and displayed on your wall doesn't need a password, a platform or a charger. It just needs a wall, and it works every single day, for decades. The things our phones can't capture deserve better than a phone's fate.
A short film
Why meaningful portraits matter.
The studio and gallery
Belgrave, by appointment.
The gallery at 26 Park Drive, Belgrave is where consultations, studio sessions and design appointments happen, open by appointment only. It's forty five minutes east of Melbourne, in the hills, which also happen to hold some of the best portrait light and locations in the state.
Meet me
The first hour is a conversation.
Book a consultation at the gallery. See the artwork, ask anything, and decide from there.