How did you first approach photography and what were some of the earlier influences that shaped the way you wanted to capture your subjects?

I first approached photography through portraiture. I was interested in the conventions we use when photographing people, the simplicity of a studio, a neutral background, considered lighting and, most importantly, the relationship between photographer and subject that brings out what is uniquely theirs.

When I began photographing birds, I wanted to use that same visual language, but most importantly I did not want to show them as specimens. I was, and am, interested in them as beings, born out of the earth, just as we are.

An early experience that influenced me was seeing Olafur Eliasson’s The Weather Project at Tate Modern in 2003. I remember walking into the Turbine Hall, encountering this enormous artificial sun and being completely overwhelmed by it. It showed me that art could alter your physical and emotional state.

I’m drawn to the simplicity of classical portraiture, but equally to scale, immersion and creating an emotional experience.

Could you tell us about the shift in your work from tighter, often solo bird portraits to capturing larger flocks in more expansive sets and constructed environments?

I came up with an exhibition I called High Society. It began when I noticed that a flock of parrots perched in a tree looked like the shape of the leaves. When I looked more closely, I could see individuals, couples and families within the flock, an entire society.

I wanted to capture that in a studio, and it took about five years to work out how. We eventually built a ten-metre aviary inside the studio and worked with more than 300 tame budgerigars. The logistics were enormous. We had to make sure the studio didn’t overheat from the lights, so we brought in a mister that fed through the air-conditioning system. I picked fresh foliage each morning to keep the birds happy, and went through about 40 kilos of birdseed. The sound was incredible.

Creatively, it allowed me to explore collective behaviour and the fascinating way a flock can move and respond almost as a single organism. There is vocal communication, but also something unseen happening between them that I find fascinating. I also loved being able to create works that connected the birds more closely to their environment.

Could you tell us about your move into video and moving-image work?

Moving-image work grew naturally from photography and my interest in noticing birds in ways we don’t normally get to see them.

Nature Is Not A Place To Visit. It Is Home was my second moving-image work, but the first time I worked with a Phantom Flex camera, filming in 4K at up to 1,000 frames per second. It is a highly specialised camera, so I work as the director alongside a specialist camera operator. At that speed, a single second of real movement can unfold over around 40 seconds on screen. Watching a bird shake water or fly through the air becomes extraordinary. You begin to see how birds physically engage with the air.

I could also work with sound and multiple screens, including triptychs. It became an important expansion of my practice and led to increasingly ambitious and immersive works such as TEMPLE and NEST, created in collaboration with my artistic partner Melvin J. Montalban.

Could you tell us about TEMPLE? What were the seeds for this project, how did you approach it differently from your previous work and how did you hope viewers would experience it?

TEMPLE was a crazy ambitious, big dream artwork that my artistic partner Melvin and I first talked about one afternoon sitting on the pier at Manly. The title came from the idea of creating an installation that was a temple to nature. Throughout history, people have made pilgrimages to temples to find tranquil stillness and connect to something larger than themselves. We wanted to create an installation that could bring people into that same state of stillness and heightened awareness.

Water was central to that. We built a large reflection pool beneath a triptych of towering screens so the birds were reflected in it. There is something about water that naturally creates stillness and contemplation.

We worked again with the Phantom Flex camera and brought in cinematographer Chris Bryan, but the production was much more ambitious. We spent a year collaborating with Ravi Wasan and the team at Feathered Friends bird sanctuary, working with rescued cockatoos. There were months of preparation and training so the birds were happy bathing and flying on set.

This was the kind of work Melvin and I dreamt of making. We were interested in creating art at a scale where hundreds or even thousands of people could experience it together.

That ambition then led to NEST, which took everything to another level. It was an even larger and more technically complex work to realise. It allowed us to think beyond the screen and explore how moving image could inhabit a sculptural form in a public space.

How did your Stillness series come about and develop?

Stillness is when I first started working with birds’ eggs. I love them because they are objects of profound beauty and symbolism. They embody not just the possibility of rebirth and transformation, but also the fragility of life. I wanted to explore this duality, capturing their perfection and wonder while offering a meditation on the extraordinary diversity and complexity of the non-human world.

The series developed through working with the Australian Museum collection, where I discovered eggs from an extraordinary range of species. I wanted to photograph them with as little distraction as possible, so each egg could be contemplated as an artwork in itself.

I also collaborated with poet and writer James Bradley, creating small inscriptions at the base of each egg that require the viewer to lean in closely to read them.