Oh My Dog. Look at Those RAW Files.
How a badly lit photo of a dopey Great Dane, three months of trial and error and a completely stagnant imagination kickstarted my creative journey.
Back in 2018, a nine month old Great Dane puppy called Duke came into my studio for his first photoshoot.
At the time, I had absolutely no idea that one particularly ridiculous photograph of him would end up changing the direction of my work.
I certainly didn't photograph it with some grand creative vision in mind.
In fact, the RAW files was pretty bloody terrible.
Holy crapola. Look at that lighting. Yikes.
Duke had given me this wonderfully dumb, completely mortified expression and I loved it. There was something about his face that made me want to do more with the photograph.
There was just one small problem.
I had absolutely no idea what.
I didn't start with an idea
I think this is worth saying because when we look at someone's finished creative work, it's very easy to assume they saw the entire thing in their head before they started.
I didn't.
There was no sketch.
No mood board.
No carefully planned collection of assets.
No profound artistic vision.
I had Duke looking bewildered and a desire to turn that expression into something.
That was it.
Then, for reasons I still can't entirely explain, I ordered a top hat from eBay.
When it arrived, I photographed it and decided I was going to put it on Duke's head.
Easy, right?
No.
I reckon it took me about two weeks of trial and error just to cut that bloody hat out and make it look like it actually belonged on his head.
But eventually I got there.
Then I looked at him and thought...
He needs glasses.
So off I went to the local pharmacy and bought a pair.
And that's where I discovered an entirely new problem.
How the hell do you photograph a pair of glasses, composite them onto a dog's face, make the lenses transparent AND still make them look like actual glass?
I photographed and Photoshopped those glasses about six different times.
It took me the better part of a month to work it out.
But I kept going.
And then something interesting started happening
My brain joined in.
The hat led to the glasses.
The glasses gave Duke a character.
And suddenly that ridiculous expression needed a reason.
Why did he look so horrified?
That's when the newspaper arrived.
I photographed an ordinary newspaper, took it into Photoshop, removed all of the original text and created my own publication:
The Doggone Daily.
The headline?
CANINES NO LONGER TOP DOG
And alongside it:
IT'S A CATASTROPHE!
The story was that the cats had taken over and the dogs were absolutely horrified to discover they were no longer in charge.
There was a little more going on underneath the joke too.
The image was a playful reflection on feminism and the way increasing independence and vocality from women can sometimes be met with shock from men accustomed to holding the power. I used cats to represent the women and dogs to represent the men, playing deliberately with the cultural associations we've traditionally attached to each.
Suddenly, Duke wasn't just a dog wearing a silly hat.
There was a story.
I took one of Duke's paws from another photograph so he could hold the newspaper, and slowly all these completely unrelated pieces started becoming one image.
Three months later...
Yep.
This thing took me about three months to create.
Not three hours.
Not one miraculous afternoon where inspiration struck and Photoshop simply bent to my will.
Three months.
There were plenty of times when I had to walk away from it for several days.
Sometimes I needed fresh eyes to see a technical problem.
But just as importantly, sometimes I needed to give my brain enough room to work out what came next.
That became one of the most important things I learned from creating It's A Catastrophe!.
Creativity isn't always about having the idea.
Sometimes it's about making enough room for the idea to find you.
Was it perfect?
Absolutely not.
Would I create it differently now?
OH DOG, YES.
There are things in that image today that make my eye twitch.
But I bloody loved making it.
And apparently other people connected with it too.
It's A Catastrophe! went on to become the image that won me the 2018 APPA Emerging Photographer of the Year, my first photography award. It later won the Creative Portrait category at WPPI and formed part of the work that earned me NZIPP International Photographer of the Year, along with receiving recognition elsewhere.
Those awards were wonderful.
But looking back, they weren't the most important thing this image gave me.
It changed the way I thought.
My next image was The Queen's Corgi
After Duke, I didn't want to stop.
The next creative piece I made was The Queen's Corgi.
And this time I approached it differently.
I'd already learned something from Duke.
Not just about Photoshop, but about how I created.
I became more willing to experiment.
More comfortable with getting things wrong.
More interested in storytelling.
More aware of how important it was to photograph my assets properly.
And far less frightened of trying something simply because I didn't already know how to do it.
Every image taught me something that I carried into the next one.
My Photoshop improved.
My understanding of light improved.
I started thinking much more carefully about perspective, colour and how all the individual elements of a composite need to relate to one another.
My storytelling became more polished.
Some might suggest increasingly unhinged.
And gradually, I started developing the creative voice that people now recognise in my work.
Here's the bit I really want you to take from this
When you look at someone's work today, you're looking at the result of everything that came before it.
You don't see the terrible RAW files.
You don't see the six failed attempts at photographing a pair of glasses.
You don't see the two weeks spent trying to stick a hat on a dog's head.
You don't see the unfinished Photoshop file that sat untouched for four days because its creator had absolutely no bloody idea what to do next.
You see the finished image.
And then you compare that finished image with where you are right now.
That's not a particularly fair comparison.
I didn't know everything I needed to know before I created It's A Catastrophe!.
I learned because I created it.
I made mistakes.
I solved them.
I made different mistakes.
I solved those.
And somewhere along the way, my brain started thinking differently.
That's why I don't believe creativity is something reserved for a lucky group of people who were simply born with more imagination than everyone else.
Creating teaches you how to create.
But you have to be willing to make some shit along the way.
Which brings me to Unleash Your Creative Vision
This entire experience you’ve just read is a big part of the philosophy behind my Unleash Your Creative Vision workshop.
I'm not interested in teaching five photographers how to recreate one of my images.
I don't want five little Belindas leaving my studio.
I want to help you develop your ideas and then give you the skills to work out how the hell to turn them into something.
We'll look at concept development, planning, assets, compositing, light, perspective, colour, storytelling and Photoshop.
We'll experiment.
We'll troubleshoot.
Things won't work.
We will drink wine and cry….
We'll work out why.
And hopefully somewhere amongst all of that, your brain will start doing exactly what mine did back in 2018.
It'll start creating.
Unleash Your Creative Vision runs November 13–15, 2026 at Frog Dog Studios in Melbourne. The workshop is limited to five photographers and there are currently four places remaining.
