Hello, hi!

I’m Kristen.

Have I ever shared my journey of creating Bobby Dazzler?

Ok. Here goes.

When I was 8 dad started bringing home a video camera from his school’s AV department and I would make my brother and our neighbour act in goofy movies (weak on the narrative, medium on the laughs).

I was hooked.

When I was 14, my photography teacher at school taught me to use the darkroom. It smelled fantastic. I was obsessed. My first roll of film was a bunch of year 8 girls being goofy around the school. Many photos of leaves and our feet. They were all terrible (the photos, not the friends, they were lovely).

In year 12 I was filmmaking obsessed. I lived and breathed writing short films and wanted to pursue it at uni. I did not get into that course. I got into a different course – and still studied film studies, but got to also keep studying French (languages were my other love). This was important. Even at 21, I knew that cinematography was not going to be a job that was easy to navigate alongside being a mother one day (I was sure back then that I one day would want kids. I’d had a baby names list going since I was about 13. What a creep). But French gave me an entry into teaching – which after years teaching kids surf classes in my parents’ business, I had worked out that I like and was pretty good at.

Important: in my 5 years of uni, I did not make a single movie. I shot one roll of film. I took 80000 digital photos of nights out at pubs in first year that I probably bulk uploaded onto Facebook (kids, we used to do that). I no longer have that hard drive. Those photos don’t exist anymore (as far as I know). My only real creative outlets were playing piano, creative writing and travel (I spent a lot of time in Europe and went to a LOT of galleries and museums and got really into architecture). Uni was essays essays essays. It taught me to write well and take critique gracefully. It sharpened my taste. My arts undergrad did not give me a single job, contact or genuine work opportunity. I wish I’d learned that earlier: I would need to create those for myself by being brave and putting myself out there. It did introduce me to my two best friends, though. They’re the best thing I got out of my uni days.

I taught Media and French at a truly lovely all-boys school in Melbourne for 7+ years. I adored it. I adored those kids. I met my husband on a school camp and it was the boys who convinced me to call him and ask him out. Haha. Some of them came to our wedding and played instruments and that memory still brings me huge joy.

Working there taught me that it’s ok to chase your tail learning new things and be a bit scrappy and imperfect – if you try hard and bring joy and enthusiasm to what you do and help encourage a really positive fun place to work then you get opportunities and deep satisfaction. I would photograph swim carnivals and school events because I was one of the only teachers who knew vaguely how to work the camera. I remember the first time I took a really good photo. It wasn’t actually very good. But I felt something spark. That was enough.

We spent three months backpacking through South America for our honeymoon. We sold all our mismatched camera systems and lenses and bought one full frame digital camera second hand and a couple of good lenses. We flicked it to manual and told ourselves if we wanted good photos of our adventure, it was going to be because we learned to make them properly. We did a little project called The Great Unwashed and it was a fun way for us to bond and experience the trip together. We started in Patagonia and finished in Colombia. Our Patagonia photos are not very good. Our Colombia photos were better.

We went to Canada (where my husband is from) and taught in the most beautiful boarding school on Vancouver Island. I learned how hard it is to photograph and edit green colour casts from the intense mossy cedar forests. I left a big part of my heart at that school and that Island when we left. I know we will be back. My kids were born there, and I believe the place where you become a mother and feel held by your community leaves deep traces in your heart. We still go back every year because we miss our family there so much. (Also, have you seen a West Coast summer?). I made constant photos of my firstborn. Ask any mother and you’ll hear a variation on a theme of feeling tugged in many directions. A bit sad and nostalgic for the present moment, which felt like it was disappearing too quickly, knowing that one day I would look back and deeply miss it. I remember being nap trapped a lot, alone with my thoughts, and that’s how I came up with the idea for my business.

While I was teaching, I photographed everyone I knew – their babies, businesses, our landscape. Reading light was a real challenge on Vancouver Island – summer sun is harsh, the tall trees block sunsets earlier than you expect, and for many months of the year you just don’t see sunlight. I started what is now Bobby Dazzler Photography in 2018 with a love of photographing wild kids being a bit feral, on backcountry adventures and at home, and mother artists in their studios – funny really, because that’s exactly what I still photograph. I definitely look back on old photos I’ve taken and cringe a bit. But there are also some old ones that I love, that feel very much at the core of me as an artist.

I do not recommend moving your business 3 years into its inception. 3 years is the sweet spot, I have found – business became more consistent and aligned, word of mouth was doing its thing, but we were ready to move back to Australia for a bit, so right when things were hitting their stride I moved Bobby Dazzler to another country, rebranded, established new packages, built a new website and shortly after returned to my love of film photography. Doing all those things at once was a terrible business decision, but I felt it needed to be done in one hit. I had found it quite hard to grow my business on Vancouver Island (it is a very small population, with not a lot of disposable income, plus I was definitely still finding my voice as an artist), and I definitely learned a few lessons that I applied pretty quickly when we got back to Aus. I built my new website while baby Tilda napped, and at night. I’d been editing at night for ages but could feel there was an end date to that bad habit. 

Moving back to the Surf Coast, where I grew up, was a bit strange, because it was hyper familiar and yet also completely different (the town’s population has exploded in the past decade). I no longer had many friends living here. But making friends when you have kids in tow is easier – I’m always the first to say hi at a playground now. Business for the first year was slow, so I used the time to do a lot of backend stuff – solid website, intentional portfolio/network building sessions, photography education, software setup. There’s a lot that happens behind the scenes in a photography business that people don’t see. I probably only spend 10-20% of my work hours with a camera in my hand! 

Something has shifted recently – I’ve hit the 3 year mark of being back home (nearly 4 actually now) and this is the busiest season I’ve ever had in my business. Two years ago I quit my teaching job when my husband took on a bigger role with a lot of travel – this lets me be home with the kids most of the time and book shoots on kinder/school days and when he is around. This flexibility has been ace for our family. We used to have lots of conversations about the juggle – who is picking up which kid from where – but it’s working for us for me to be default pickup person. I find it really hard on school holidays though, when the work is there but all my work hours get absorbed! Leaving teaching created a big space in my mind and it was literally the week after my last week in the classroom that I had several well-aligned inquiries come through. A lightbulb went on in my head. I’d been keeping my business small because it was all I could handle, and I was worried it wouldn’t grow enough to sustain our family. But the truth was, I hadn’t given it enough time or oxygen to just let it do its thing. I had been working crazy hard at it in every available moment for years (I am hyper focused and tenacious with it, really), but I just needed to honour it by giving it dedicated time and not just tiny windows on the fringes. 

For years, I was hungry to make photos, to work, to grow this business. I really believed in what I was doing. I could see how mothers felt when they witnessed themselves in photos with their children, how the photographs served as proof that they were present even in the hard bits. I wanted to see children as they really are, not their cheese faces. My GOD they really are little for such a short time (it’s criminal). I wanted to encourage parents; I knew I was good at that with kids in the classroom and I wanted fellow mothers to feel that too. 

The last piece of the puzzle is the personal growth and joy that has come from finding my creative community these past three years – mostly fellow mother film photographers who are empathetic, kind, generous with their time and knowledge. This has let me lean deeply into finding my own photographic artist voice outside of all the influences we see online. I discovered the world of monographs. I realised I’d been doing pretty well at the service provider side of running a photography business – now it was time to connect to the artist side of me, and fuse them together. It’s sometimes tricky and I am always navigating the balance, because the truth is I want to make art for people, not alone, I love deep conversation and showing women what an amazing job they are doing at their life’s art project of making kids and art. It’s an ingrained teacher thing, wanting to encourage others and help unlock a passion that’s inside them. I’m not a hugely conceptual photographer, but I witness well and enter scenes with a lot of empathy and then try to layer knowledge of art conventions and history to create artistic interpretations of what I see.

Anyway, if you’ve read this far you’re an absolute legend, because that was a lot of waffle. But it’s all true. Creating a business baby has taught me a lot about the importance of being resourceful, curious, tenacious, creative, a good communicator, a bit scrappy, resilient and consistent. I try to run my business with a lot of integrity and generosity, because I value these things so deeply. Truly though, I just love making photographs. I would quite like to go back to 8 year old Kristen and let her know that it’s going to turn into something. She would have been stoked.