My name is Louise Barbara and I live in a not-so-small town in Victoria, Australia. I have a lot of favourites things: a lion called Simba; the piano; teaching; writing; reading; creating; photos; history; travel; baking . Two of these are particular favourites: travel and photography.
I've done what I like to think is a fair amount of travelling in my 21 years. I grew up in a sleeping bag, spending a lot of time camping around Victoria with my family, during school holidays and on weekends. I've travelled up through Central Australia and back, living in a tent with my Mum, Dad and younger sister. We moved up to a camper trailer next, travelling up along the East Coast through Canberra, Sydney and the Gold Coast. We've spent time in: Tasmania, visiting relatives; tiny beach-side locations playing in rock pools; major cities catching trams and listening to buskers; abandoned railways, climbing through trains. There’s been floods, fires and getting stuck on rapids. I've gotten lost, a LOT, much to my Mother’s dismay. I've travelled around the South Island of New Zealand, marvelling at how it could be so cold in January. I've stuffed myself full at a Queenstown buffet, played on pianos I really shouldn't have and carried around a toy sheep, despite being 18 at the time. I’ve been on a school trip to Italy, touring for two weeks and living with an Italian family in Spinete for one week. I ate gelato, got lost (no surprise there), decided that my favourite saint has to be Saint Sebastian (mostly because he was in just about every gallery we visited), bought metre long bars of chocolate and Donald Duck comics, was told about a hundred times that my coat could not possibly be warm enough (it was, some weird hiking invention), stood on top of a snow plow (still don’t understand why my Italian parents wanted me to do that), visited castles at sunset, collected moss for Christmas sculptures, got yelled at by Italian grandmas (her grandson was playing music too loud), was given ten Euros for simply being lucky enough to live by a grandmother who had lost everything and so many other things.
I started taking photographs on this trip, and really haven't stopped since. In my final year of school, I completed a 365 project, taking one photo a day for the whole year. Photography is something that I really enjoy, I find all of it so interesting. I bought my first DSLR in 2010 (the one I still use, a Canon EOS 500D) and my first SLR in 2012 (a Canon AE-1 Program). I love to capture moments and scenes like the ones I see in my head. I love to convey stories and memories through my photographs.
A couple of years ago I went on a mega trip around Europe, travelling with my friend Mel to numerous fantastic destinations indulging in this love of photography. You can view all the photographs from my trip in my blog posts or just the highlights here.
More recently, I travelled solo to Japan, exploring the unique history and culture on offer there. You can view all the photographs and read all the storieshere, or view my video diaries here.
If you are interested in purchasing a print or booking a portrait session, please leave me a message here.