I’m in Bali and for the past 2 weeks all I’ve been doing is getting massages, eating nasi goreng and laying about (as well as editing) but I haven’t done a shoot in 2 whole weeks which feels like a lifetime for me! So today I got to shoot with the beautiful, Pascale Celine. She is breathtaking.

There are places that I continually miss. Papua New Guinea, my home. Hawaii and it’s warm tepid waters, Mexico and the life that is bursting from it’s seams and occasionally Copenhagen and my dear friends that live there.

When I think back to my life thus far, one of the most memorable was my six weeks spent by the sea in Mexico. They were some of the best days of my life. So young and so free. Mexico captivated my heart and I plan on always going back there throughout my life.

“We are pirates. we move in nautical miles. each others anchors. each others buoys, the rockets red, already the world entire.” – llse bendorf

model: sarah covington

People say having children gives your life meaning. But I feel like mine is already filled with meaning. People say that having children allows you to have a legacy, but my legacy is my work. My passion is my work and I am not willing to put my career and what makes me love who I am everyday for children. Does that sound selfish? Well maybe it is. But when it comes to the one constant thing that always brings me joy, I have to be selfish. Erica Jong wrote this poem that I’ve always been in love with about how women would love to do both – have children and keep a house but also chase their dreams and their passion. But that it’s pretty much impossible to do both at the same time…

I wish there were not a choice;
I wish I could be two women.
I wish the days could be longer.
But they are short.
So I write while
the dust piles up.

I sit at my typewriter
remembering my grandmother
& all my mothers,
& the minutes they lost
loving houses better than themselves
& the man I love cleans up the kitchen
grumbling only a little
because he knows
that after all these centuries
it is easier for him
than for me.

And this is how I feel. A woman who has never dreamed of marriage or children only the night stars and an open road.

Another look book shoot I did for a cool, local Brisbane vintage company – Tiger Temple.

I borrowed this from Ying’s blog, Post Halycon. So much about this piece resonated with me. Ying is such a talented writer and photographer.

…….There’s something there. A moment, a story, a thought. I photograph it… nothing. I consider writing about it… maybe.

It crosses my mind that aside from inspirational fodder, what I have before me is something else. Perhaps it’s desire. Dare I say it, a longing to participate instead of observe.

I watch the children mostly. Scrambling over the sun-warmed rocks, high-pitched exclamations of excitement when a small, silvery fish swims close to the mouth of the green net they wave about in the shallows. The water is turquoise and friendly. They are completely absorbed in the hunt, engaged in mortality and their fledgeling power over it.

Strategies are discussed, failures analysed. The determination for dominion over nature will keep them there till dusk, salty skin burnt amber by the sun.

The grown-ups lie supine on deck chairs like offerings on an altar to Apollo… either unaware or interested in the outcome of the hunt. They lie in pairs, pale, distant figures, some blossoming in red. I wonder what stage of boredom they are at on a scale of 1 to 10. I wonder what irrepressible yearnings are knocking unheeded upon the portcullis of their marriages.

Their offspring, by contrast, walk with a nimbus of wonder about them, fed by the unmatched exhilaration of discovery. I wonder at what point that magic was lost upon their parents…