Award-winning Photography
Recognised photography from Australia and around the world.
Celebrating Award-Winning Photography
Recognition from professional photography awards in Australia and internationally.
Throughout my photography career, I’ve been fortunate to have a number of my images recognised in professional photography awards and competitions.
From landscapes and travel photography to creative and illustrative work, these awards represent different chapters of my journey as a photographer — and many of the photographs remain among my personal favourites.
This collection brings together a selection of my award-winning images and the stories and places behind them.
Award-Winning Collection
A selection of photographs recognised in professional photography awards and competitions.
From quiet landscapes and extraordinary places to more creative and illustrative work, each of these photographs represents a moment in my photographic journey.
Explore the collection below to discover the images and the recognition they received.
Finding My Creative Voice
Western Australian Professional Photography Awards — Gold · Illustrative
After several years of entering professional photography awards, listening carefully to the judges and learning from every image critiqued, I began looking beyond the photographs I would normally enter.
One evening, while considering what I could create for the Illustrative category, I began experimenting with two of my own photographs — an aerial image of a Western Australian pink lake and a tree I had photographed in Mandurah.
Using part of the pink lake to create the feeling of an approaching storm or wave, I isolated the tree and brought the two photographs together. The finished image felt intuitive — less about documenting a place and more about allowing an idea to develop.
The photograph received a Gold Award at the Western Australian Professional Photography Awards and later a Silver Award at the Australian Professional Photography Awards.
The Gold also placed me among the top three finalists in Western Australia in the Illustrative category that year — an achievement that gave me enormous confidence while I was still finding my feet as a professional photographer.
Learning to See Differently
Australian Professional Photography Awards — Gold · Travel
This photograph was made at Jantar Mantar during a photography trip through India with photographers Jackie Ranken and Mike Langford, both of whom had already played an important part in my development as a photographer.
I had first met Mike during a photography workshop in New Zealand, an experience that had a lasting influence on the direction of my photography. Jackie had also continued to mentor me online, and their creative approach encouraged me to look beyond simply recording what was in front of me and to begin thinking more deliberately about what could make an image different.
By the time I travelled to India, I had also spent several years entering professional photography awards, listening closely to the judging and learning that the strongest photographs weren't necessarily the prettiest. Judges were looking for originality, creativity and a photographer's own way of seeing.
At Jantar Mantar, I photographed this scene already imagining it as an award image. The original RAW file was far from perfect, but I could see something in the shape, texture, light and tiny architectural detail that made it unusual.
I first entered the photograph in the Illustrative category at the Western Australian awards. The judges assumed it was a composite and referred to what they thought was a texture layer. It wasn't — the photograph was a single in-camera capture.
That misunderstanding gave me an idea. When I entered the image in the Australian Professional Photography Awards, I moved it into the Travel category, where its strength as a single photographic capture could be better understood.
It received my first — and only — APPA Gold Award, an achievement reached by only a small percentage of entries that year.
More than the award itself, this photograph reminds me how much I had learned: to listen, to experiment, to trust my own eye and, perhaps most importantly, to see differently
Becoming a Landscape Photographer
Australian Professional Photography Awards — Silver · Landscape
After my first photography trip to New Zealand years earlier, I knew I wanted to return with everything I had learned since. I had recently completed a landscape photography course and created a wish list of places I wanted to photograph, helped by two female photographer friends and mentors I'd met through photography.
One place on that list was the famous Wanaka Tree. It's been photographed countless times, so I knew simply standing on the shore and taking the same photograph as everyone else wasn't going to be enough.
That morning was bitterly cold — around -2°C, with the lake water only a few degrees above freezing. I'd been told that if I really wanted to pass the test and become a “real landscape photographer”, I needed to get out into the lake with my camera and tripod.
There was only one problem — I hadn't been able to hire waders.
Eventually I took off my shoes and socks, rolled my pants up to my knees and walked barefoot into the freezing water. A line of photographers on the shore weren't particularly impressed that I was now standing in their view, but I stayed long enough to find the composition I wanted.
For a few precious minutes, low cloud settled behind the tree, hiding the mountains normally visible in the background and creating beautiful separation around its branches. Even better, the tree was filled with birds. Soon afterwards the clouds shifted and the birds flew away.
Once I came back out of the lake, several of the photographers who had been waiting on shore began taking off their own shoes and heading into the water too. My husband, meanwhile, appeared from our camper with a very welcome hot cup of tea.
The photograph went on to receive a Silver Award at the Australian Professional Photography Awards and was later published in the American magazine Outdoor Photographer, along with an interview about the image.
I went to Wanaka wanting to prove to myself that I'd grown as a landscape photographer. I came away with frozen feet, a photograph I'm still proud of — and perhaps proof that sometimes getting the shot really does mean getting your feet wet.
From Lake Rotoiti to National Geographic
National Geographic Traveler — “Best of the World” · Top 15 Finalist
By this stage in my photography journey, my family had become very accustomed to waiting for me. Learning photography meant stopping constantly, chasing light, trying different compositions and inevitably asking everyone to wait while I took “just one more photograph.”
During a trip through New Zealand, we visited Lake Rotoiti in Nelson Lakes National Park early one morning. The lake was beautifully still, with the jetty leading towards the mountains, and I knew the scene needed something to give it a sense of scale and story.
That something turned out to be my husband.
With his morning cup of tea in hand, I asked him, “Pleeeasse can you just stand down there for me?” He walked to the end of the jetty while I composed the photograph — followed, of course, by the photographer’s instruction every family member knows well: “Right. Don’t move!”
The photograph later caught my attention when National Geographic invited photographers to submit images for its Traveler “Best of the World” cover competition. I entered a portrait crop of the image, never imagining quite where it would lead.
From around 34,000 submissions, the photograph was selected as one of just 15 finalists. National Geographic created a Traveler cover featuring each finalist image, and suddenly the quiet photograph I had made that morning at Lake Rotoiti — complete with my husband and his cup of tea — was being seen around the world.
The story was picked up by newspapers in New Zealand, with the photograph appearing prominently in coverage about the competition. It was an incredibly exciting time, particularly for someone who was still learning, experimenting and finding her confidence as a photographer.
There was also a certain amount of amusement in our family. After years of everyone patiently putting up with how long I could take to make a photograph, my husband had unexpectedly become part of one of my most recognised images.
Apparently my photography wasn't quite so annoying anymore.
This photograph remains one of my favourites — not simply because of where it went, but because of the memory behind it. A beautiful New Zealand morning, a patient husband with his cuppa, and one of those photographs I could never have imagined would travel so far.
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