Sydney Children’s Portraits: Wild and precious life in the Australian bush

Recently, my sweet friend Amanda of Amanda Voelker Photography contacted me about a new idea. She wanted to create images inspired by poems and songs. I thought it was a great idea, and she created Poetique. Along with Nicki of  Nicki Bosch Photography, and a guest blogger,  we look to a different poem as our inspiration and  each post our interpretation as a single photo. Our first poem was ” The Summer day” by Mary Oliver.

My favourite lines from this poem are:

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do

 with your one wild and precious life?”

These words inspire me to take a chance, and step outside my comfort zone. To face into my fears,, and embrace each day as life is “wild” and “precious”. I am sure you may read another message from this poem, but that is the beauty of poetry. But how do I capture that in an image; one image only. I wasn’t sure. And where? Where would be the best place to capture the “wild” and  the “precious”. I had a few ideas bouncing around in my mind, but nothing was giving me that glow of “this is it!”. So I waited, and looked around my every day. I knew that glow would be there but I needed to be patient.

Then, as I drove my son to basketball, I found the wild and precious, and I knew instantly I would return later that day. The Australian bush is wild, and untamed. It’s beauty is something that I didn’t appreciate until we lived overseas. It was then that I realised that it’s beauty is it’s uniqueness. Once I was away from it every day, I began to see how precious it is. This beauty is something I appreciate so much more, and know that what we see as ugly can also be seen in a different light with all-seeing eyes. I want to include this landscape in more of my portraits, and knew it was time to step outside my comfort zone.

And although, I only needed one image for our page, I took many. Here are my favourites.