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This year I’ve begun a couple of new projects. One is about shopping (sounds exciting, I know, but with luck I can make something of it!) …

The other is to do with the Millennial generation coming of age (that is, people born in or close to the year 2000). This began with the realization that my own son, born in 2000, will be an adult very soon, voting, working: along with his peers, starting to run the world.

This project will be made up of collaborative self portraits. I’ll speak to the subjects about location, lighting, composition, etc; and they will fire the shutter with a remote control. For a long time I’ve been thinking about the influence that photographers exert on people when making portraits (and other images). This is partly an experiment in giving up a good deal of that power to the subject of the image, something I think is especially relevant in the context of this series.

This small gallery contains some test shots. I want to continue the series in the field, incorporating something of peoples’ environment into the photos rather than shooting in the studio. Please contact me if you know someone born around the turn of the millennium and might like to participate.

A young couple at a Shell service station, Warrawong NSW 2016

Pop-up amusement park, South Beach, Wollongong 2016

A young family, Coniston, NSW 2016

South Beach, Wollongong, January 2016

December 24, 2015. I stumbled across a street Christmas eve party in Coniston, up the road from where I live. Residents had blocked off both ends of the steep road with wheelie bins and kids were hooning down on their bikes. I held up this young lad for a few moments to try to get a portrait in focus in the dying light; I think he was concentrating on the smell of sausage rolls being served just outside the frame.

A street Christmas Eve party, Coniston NSW 2015

Coniston, NSW, 2016

Justin, North Beach, Wollongong, December 25th 2015. Justin got an electric long skateboard imported for Christmas.