Food matters. Stories matter. The work matters. But presence … being fully there with the people we love … matters just as much. There was a season in my life when the stories didn’t stay at work. During the 2010 global financial crisis response, I was part of fundraising campaigns that required me to engage deeply with stories from around the world, especially stories of children lacking food. Day after day, I watched, listened, and edited moments of hunger, hardship, and su

There are stories I have told over the years and there are stories that have shaped me. This is one of them. It was during a major disaster response that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. I found myself in the early days of the relief effort, entering ground-zero areas with a camera and microphone, trying to document what had happened, and what people were going through. We slept where we could, sometimes in temporary shelters set up by locals - sometimes in monasteries

The stories we tell are never ours alone. We enter people’s spaces. We ask for their time. We ask for their trust. And sometimes, without even realising it, they give us more than their stories. I still remember standing at the MCG, surrounded by my own work. The ground floor had been transformed into a photo exhibition — images from a remote village in far eastern Indonesia, displayed as part of a Planetshakers fundraising event. People walked through, paused, looked closely

My experience with Digital Asset Management (DAM) didn’t start with systems, vendors, or platforms. It started with a sharp object and a strip of film . A strip of negatives, a handwritten note. That was my metadata. Back in the early days, when negative film and dark room defined photography, I used to write descriptions directly onto negative film sleeves — carefully noting what each frame contained. That was our “metadata.” That was our system. Simple. Manual. Fragile. Bu

I don’t bring relief — I carry stories, and the responsibility that comes with them. Disaster was not a distant concept in my life — it was something I grew up around. Yet it wasn’t until I experienced it firsthand that I understood its human depth. That moment shifted me from observing stories to carrying them — a journey that would lead me into humanitarian work across some of the world’s most difficult contexts. On an Australian military flight returning from relief effort

Before the cameras, before the editing software, before the work I do today — there were people. People who saw something in me before I fully understood it myself. People who opened doors, shared knowledge, and quietly shaped the path that led me into storytelling and content production. This is a small dedication to three of them. Photo of me with my mum. Behind her were her favourite orchids. My Mother — The First Investment My mum was a school teacher — an English grammar

“The current generation may not be responsible for what happened in the past, but we are responsible for the next generation knowing the truth.” Over the years, my work has given me the privilege of spending time with First Nations Elders and communities across Australia. Through these experiences I have been welcomed to Country, sat in quiet conversations with Elders, attended ceremonies and national gatherings, and travelled through many places where the land itself seems t

What Matters Is the Heart You Put Into It I don’t believe in the word underdog. Not when someone is chasing a vision that lives deep inside their heart. To me, that word suggests someone is expected to lose. But when you are striving through the odds toward something you believe in, you are not an underdog—you are simply someone on a journey. That was me in the late 1990s. When electricity was rare, candlelight became my editing suite and notebooks became my first studio. Eve