Mel’s passion for photography began when she first held a 110 film cassette camera in her hands when she was 14 years old.

It continued as she went through high school, studying photography and black and white developing and printing for the HSC, then moving onto community college courses, fitted around family and work.

Covid in 2020 finally gave Mel the chance to step up to studying her dream course - a Certificate IV in Photography and Digital Imaging at Ultimo TAFE in Sydney - a well respected institution in the photography business. This was followed in 2021 with enrollment in the Diploma of Photography at the same institution.

Initially primarily interested in local bird life, sports and photographing the students and functions at the school she had worked at for 10 years, in February, 2021 however everything changed.

A personal tragedy changed everything.

Coupled with a second Covid lockdown, her direction changed to still life photography, primarily flowers. Photography became a way of processing her circumstances and provided a great focus and distraction. The images challenge the perceptions of perfection as presented on social media, and our understanding of those navigating mental health issues.

There is inherent beauty in flowers, even as they start to age. There is always some slight imperfection in her images, as life is not as perfect as the social media images would have us believe. In fact, life is “perfectly imperfect” and can still be beautiful with all its imperfections.

Her softly lit, sometimes water colour like images strive to show life in all its stages and encourage the viewer to look past the perfection and see the broken in all its beauty - as we need to do with our fellow humans.