i met faye a while back- and ended up photographing her family:
faye is part owner of backyard aquaponics who are the aquaponics experts of australia! aquaponics is based on productive systems as they are found in nature. it can be loosely described as the combination of aquaculture and hydroponics and this is where the name aqua-ponics originates. it basically means you grow food plants which take nutrients from the fish pond underneath- the plants clean the water which then cycles back to the fish. too cool! and you can have small systems right up to huge ones, which means that they are suitable for all homes.
anyway, faye asked me to come down and give the crew some pointers on using their digital slrs. these guys are mad photographers! here’s one of faye’s great pics (because i LOVE frogs!):
i think i learnt more from faye than she did from me! she is in love with nature and plants and systems and mostly BUGS. of any kind. she gets so excited over bugs that really, you kind of have to be excited too! walking around the aquaponics systems she is looking so closely and actually seeing- things that most people would never notice. it really made me realise how easy it is to miss, even for a photographer like me who is supposedly always looking! faye can point out the tiniest off eggs, notice some unusal fly, or find a wasp that has parisitised a caterpillar (i think that’s what it’s called?!). after hanging out with her for a few hours i felt that i had been missing out on a whole world, and i now have a new found respect for the mini eco-system of my backyard (except for the cockroaches!).
here are a couple of things that i noticed thanks to faye’s influence and way of seeing. i’m so glad her enthusiasm and knowledge has rubbed off just a little! :)
