After reading this tribute to Candy Royalle in The Guardian I thought I would write a few words about a lesson that I learned from her a few years ago. Candy was a warrior in her craft, an honest and fierce wordsmith. I recall at a music industry discussion/ workshop in God Queen a few years ago that Candy also attended – I brought up some of the challenges of being a female music photographer in a male-dominated industry –particularly in the hip hop scene in Sydney. I was convicted by some of the unethical practices happening within the industry and its double standards; and choosing not to conform to certain activities or practices, let alone document such things and staying silent on what I have witnessed. Her response resonated with me which was to 'speak truth to bullshit'. The thing that didn't sit right with me was that I am also a qualified social worker, and human rights and social justice principles are fundamental in our practice. It did not make sense for me to treat them as a binary set of values and practice standards across industries. That is the essence of human rights and social justice. Being honest is a daily choice. It's not like one day you wake up and then you are suddenly an honest person. We make the choice everyday whether we take the hard road or the easy road. I know I have had my fair share of silence and speaking truth along my journey both professionally and personally. Some people have told me that I am brave because I am honest, but ironically to be honest, sometimes I am and sometimes I am not. I definitely have a long way to go. I just want to encourage you to do the same as it is the first step to freedom for many, including yourself.

Condolences to her family and loved ones, may they have the strength and courage as they mourn the loss of this beautiful soul.

Life can be so demanding sometimes. So I make sure that I take some time out for myself. As much as I am a suburban girl, I can easily adapt to the country, a city or even a village. But you can't beat the tranquility of the natural landscape when it’s just you and the Creator (the Universe, Allah, God etc). Throughout my travels across the globe so far, I’ve come across some pretty cool street art. But I must say we have some pretty cool local work too– this time we got to check out some cool work in Katoomba. I didn’t bring my digital SLR this time as that thing can get pretty heavy. So I used my iPhone 7 Plus (I think that's the model lol).
Here are some of my random thoughts...

Everything that I see, is art. Life is art. Anyone is an artist, whether or not you have a qualification. As Pablo Picasso once said ‘every child is an artist. the trouble is staying an artist when you grow up’.
So if we are all born artists – we are innately creative beings, particularly those who immerse themselves into their craft. Our work can be expressive but we are either subconsciously or consciously inspired by other artists, artworks, people, experiences.. life. When I see photographs, whether portraiture, landscape, etc. we photographers are called the 'artist'. But when I think about it more deeply. Am I not capturing the “artwork” (or subject) that was already created well before I captured it? Certainly, no doubt, it is our own take, our own perspective and an amazing image is made with our skills. We spend time and money on educating ourselves and buying all this equipment and tools to create something beautiful. But the point is the natural subjects are already created.

I am not overly religious or a fundamentalist in my beliefs, but I am spiritual and am pretty open minded. However, I do wonder when we capture an image or create something, are we really just creating biproducts of the work of an artist who much bigger than us? When I take the pictures, I am called the artist. The way I perceive it as that I am simply taking photographs of people, that an “artist” or “creator” has crafted.

In the world of art, if you have an original piece it is worth a shitload of money especially when an artist had passed away. If you own an imitation, it is much cheaper. Further, I think of humanity in that way. That is, we are all limited edition artworks and there is no duplicate of ourselves. To put it in perspective, the world's population currently sits at 7.6 billion people! Yet, we all have our unique DNA and not one of our fingerprints are identical, not our past ancestors, our current generation or neither will the future generations (even though not everyone has fingers, but you get what I mean). That’s how I see humanity and the world. Individually unique, but also the same in many ways such as the need to feel loved, valued and belong.