As a child, Amanda was always fascinated by her father’s Canon AE-1 that sat in the cupboard of the living room. Her dad said it was broken, but she used it anyway, going around the house pretending to take real photos of her family, without any film in the camera. She spent a lot of her childhood sitting in front of that cupboard going through family photo albums, looking at the photos her dad took in the 70’s & 80’s with that camera. She always loved how they looked. How antique they looked to her, the imperfections about them. The washed out colours and accidental fogging of the film.

It was when Amanda was around 15 years of age, which she then started to take photography more seriously. By that she means she actually used a camera that worked and had film loaded in it.

 

Her father bought her first SLR camera around this time and in high school she took up photography as a subject.
She was excited that you could even do photography in school time and it was considered a subject.
In this time she spent almost every weekend shooting class assignments with her good friend and fellow photographer Karina Illovska.

Amanda enjoyed photography more and more at this point and decided to continue studying photography. She decided to do a foundations course for a year at Meadowbank TAFE when she was around 18 years old.

At the end of that year Amanda had to think about what she would study after high school.
So she enrolled into Ultimo TAFE where she completed her Certificate 3 in Photography in 2004.

Amanda had a break from studying after her Certificate, where she decided to apply for a job as a school and pre-school photographer. She got the job when she was 19 years old and worked there for a few years.
The one thing Amanda took from this job is that patience is the most vital key to get the right expression when photographing people.

After a long break from studying, Amanda decided to come back to Ultimo TAFE to complete her Diploma in Photo Imaging in 2012.
She has met some incredibly talented photographers along-the way and made some great friends.

Today, Amanda continues to primarily photograph people. She’s always striving to bring out their personalities in that one split second she hits the shutter. She tries to make every portrait better and better but it’s never good enough!

This exhibition is a tribute to her family. She wanted to do something for this exhibition that meant something to her. So she decided to go back to exactly where she started. Taking photos of her family in their home.