Not so long ago Emma worked for a major pharmaceutical company where she made vaccines for flu, tetanus, diptheria and plague — yep plague. Full aseptic processing was in place and one’s strict adherence to Standard Operating Procedures was critical. One slip could mean 1000 litres of carefully made Fluvax down the drain…

Prior to that she worked in a bottle shop while putting herself through an unproductive few years of an arts degree at Lat Trobe Uni. One of her lecturers was certain she was best suited to a career in philosophy, most of them probably thought the bottle shop wasn’t such a bad option. Fortunately, La Trobe offered something called a ‘Leisure Course’ in photography – 6 weeks of black & white shooting, darkroom developing and the realisation that she had found what she was looking for.

So after a near-death experience at the aforementioned drug company and an urge to follow the dream, Emma hung up her lab coat and headed to RMIT for a schooling in all things photographic. She then served her ‘apprenticeship’ at Melbourne’s Bakehouse Studio where she spent a couple of years as an assistant and producer and worked madly on her own shooting. Here she fell in love with the portrait and the ability photography has of connecting with people.

In early 2008 Emma flew the nest and landed in her own studio space. She blew up her expensive printer trying to print folio, but other than that she couldn’t be happier.