I’ve taken photographs since I won a camera in a sandcastle building competition at Frankston pier as a child.

To paraphrase Barry Humphries, "I was self-educated, attended the VCA". I used to refer to art school as a “sheltered workshop”. It was full of misfits — and I’m talking about the staff and the students. At the time I was serving my apprenticeship in what would later become full scale heroin addiction that retarded my development as an artist for quite some years. I got off that treadmill 22 years ago, thankfully. Over the years I’ve experimented artistically, drawing, printmaking, painting then a variety of object based disciplines. I'm a slow learner, it took some time for the penny to drop that photography, the thing I'd always been doing along the way was the most satisfying to me because my approach is honest, it's not about schools of thought or concepts it's just pictures of stuff.

I take my camera everywhere with me; the way I work is what I like to jokingly refer to as "stalking" I find people who appeal to me for all sorts of reasons and approach them. An important part of my work is persuasion so I have to be ready to work quickly, in a condensed period of decision making (light, exposure, focus, background, composition). It’s extremely rare that I take a shot without consent but I'm too spontaneous and anti-establishment to be bothered with carrying a stack of model release forms with me so I get around this by making sure my subjects are totally engaged, staring down the barrel of the lens so there's absolutely no chance they weren't compliant.

I consciously go for a straightforward approach, relying on the honesty of the subject rather than ‘Photoshop’ gimmickry, studio effects, lighting and make-up. I celebrate the ordinary. I examine the commonplace, anti-paparazzi, anti-celebrity the details and the people often ignored. The work is a critical observation of my country frozen with a camera, in an attempt to capture the truth of Australian culture. I get great personal satisfaction from the interaction photography allows me with otherwise total strangers and alien to me situations. In this age of limitless hype and phony celebrity I think it’s good to remind yourself that you only have to scratch the surface of the image people present to the world, to discover we really are all one.

The camera is a magic key that unlocks gates to people and places inner worlds.

"Congratulations, your work is showing us an aspect of ourselves, something we don't see every day. It takes talent to make great pictures that hold anyone's interest. Hope to see more great pictures in the future."-Shelby Lee Adams 2009