A bit about me
I photograph people.
That’s the short version.
I’m a Gold Coast photographer drawn to people, performance, and images that hold onto something real. Portraits, couples, performers, fire, pole, creative and intimate work. It took a winding path here.
It started in my last year of school, when a Panasonic Lumix turned up for Christmas and I decided, with an unreasonable amount of confidence, that I was a photographer. It couldn’t shoot RAW and it couldn’t change lenses. It was enough to make me obsessed. The business was called D’Amour Photography. It made no money and I learned in public, the usual way. The eye came first. Everything after is me working out what to do with it.
How I got here
My first real step into the industry was Mark Morffew Studios on the Gold Coast. I started by assisting, moved into shooting, and ended up helping run the place. That is where the foundation came from: how to read a face, how to shape light so someone feels good in it, and how much of this is really about making the person on the other side of the lens comfortable.
A few years on I was in-house at Culture Kings, shooting fashion, product and campaign content under constant deadlines. The Home of the Hoodies run, a different face and a different brief every day. It taught me to work fast without getting sloppy, and to deliver exactly what a brief asks under real pressure, without losing the creative eye while doing it.
Then I went back to freelance and shot a bit of everything while finding my direction again. Portraits, model portfolios, events, even a season of Santa photography. In 2020 I talked my way onto the media team at Elements Festival with two cameras on a harness and enough front to walk into the briefing like I belonged there. That turned into years on the road: Rabbits Eat Lettuce, Dragons Dreaming, Earth Frequency, whole seasons of them, all night, in the worst light a field can throw. It is where the low-light craft stopped being luck, and where I met most of the performers I still shoot now.
That work became After Dark Media for the events and festivals. This, under my name, is the personal side: performers, portraits, couples and creative work, with room to slow down and build something together.
How I work
I’m a little introverted, and I think it’s made me a better photographer. Being photographed can feel vulnerable, even for people used to it. I don’t expect you to turn up knowing how to pose or how to be on camera. We ease into it. I’ll guide you when you want direction and give you space when that works better. Some people want clear posing. Some just need enough trust to settle in. Both are fine. The frames I care about most happen once that first layer of self-consciousness drops, when it stops being about taking photos and starts being about making something that feels like you.
It scales, too. It can be one camera, one light, one person. Or up to whatever the brief needs, with real production through the people I work with: lighting through Krank’d, LED screens through Onesol Productions, theming and styling through Events Fantastic. Same eye on it either way.
Who I work with
Mostly performers. Individual performers building a portfolio or an EPK, and the AV production crews who put them on a stage. Events Fantastic is the one I work with most, week in and week out: they flew me to the US to study how the big immersive shows get built, and the camera has been interstate with them since. Then GigLife, Krank’d Productions and Onesol Productions, people I’ve shot for years and keep shooting.
The work
Light with character.
Soft window light, warm sunset skin, deep shadow, coloured studio, firelight, LED trails, theatrical haze. A little cinematic, still human at the centre. Filter it, or open any frame.
Also under my name
Mikey. Gold Coast.
I want the photos to mean something later.
More than proof something happened. Something that carries a bit of the person, the energy, the moment. If that sounds like what you’re after, let’s make something.
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