It's a common question - what is Photographersdownunder? How did we get started and what are we about?
I love telling people this story because it underpins my confirmation, that anyone with a passion has the basis to step foot into the conservation field. No, there's no bachelors degree behind us but what we put into our work is highly respected in the field. There's no reason you can't do the same and at the moment, Australia's environmental sector needs all the TLC it can get.
It all started in 2017, when I was studying through Qld Tafe. I landed a knowledgeable and incredibly influential teacher who had me in awe when she retold stories from her career, like her involvement in the recovery program for the Eastern bristle bird. One of the best parts of this course was the week a bird ID challenge was put forward - which turned out to be one of the biggest turning points of my young adult life. It was pretty simple, we had 7 days to go out, look for birds, ID them and return to class the next week with our list. I didn't know much about birds then - but with the premise of a prize at the end of the challenge this was something I was willing to try.
So a full week later after visiting a few different areas on the Gold Coast as a clueless bird observer I returned to class and cleaned out the bird id challenge. For someone with no knowledge of anything more than a noisy miner, kookaburra or magpie I endeavoured to win, and did just that.. walking away one Simpson & Day field guide richer. From there I realised I couldn't just switch that part of my brain off and that my curiosity had permanently peaked. Soon after, Jai and I were spending more time outdoors and figured it'd be easier to identify birds if we had a decent camera to do so.
Back then we knew nothing about photography and to start with we had some fairly beginner spec gear. Jai had the better set up than I (and still does) but you would frequently find us out armed with a Nikon D40, Nikon D5600 and one 70-300 lens between us. Not too long after that our Instagram was formed and we had a really hard time finding a name that wasn't already taken, whilst still sounding original and memorable. Funnily enough Photographersdownunder was a spin off from a separate Instagram I used to have, which was focused on my pet Guinea pigs - thus named 'Guineasdownunder'.
It didn't take long for Photographersdownunder to surpass the potential of Guineasdownunder and I decided to deactivate the beloved gpig Instagram to focus my spare time into developing my knowledge elsewhere. We've spent hundreds of hours traveling to different areas of Qld, made some lifelong friends and taken a crazy amount of photos. Camera gear was slowly upgraded, dropped in mud, repaired, loved, nurtured.. the works.
Flash forward two years later our Instagram is fast approaching 4000 followers, Jai & I are core members of 'Friends of Nerang National Park' where we frequently partake in community engagement to teach fellow like minded people the things we were yearning to know a few years ago. It's crazy to think such a massive shift in lifestyle all stemmed from one influential teacher, a bird challenge and a Simpson & Day field guide.