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Since 2010, I’ve ended each year by wrapping up with some of my favourite moments through the photographs I’ve taken. It’s been a great year for pushing myself to experiment in new areas and styles of photography, both commercially and personally. I found myself heading in a few new directions with the primary focus being on creating new personal work, selling my work as prints and to continue to grow my portfolio photography business, “Foliolio”. Looking back on my photography from the year, it’s interesting to see how well these three things seemed to fit together and helped one another grow. This is my top 15 from 2015.

Although I spent much of my childhood in Japan, and still head back over to Tokyo at least once a year, I’ve never really had a chance to play tourist and actually explore some of the most beautiful and interesting places that Japan has to offer. This year I made a conscious effort to do just that and as a result, saw some incredible things. One of them being the beautiful deer of Nara.

I teamed up with One Fine Print who helped me get my personal work onto people’s walls, something I’ve been striving to do well for years. Not only did they do an exceptional job at that, they also got one of my prints on the air and into the penthouse of Shay and Dean, the winners of “The Block” a reality TV show about renovations with a strong focus on interior design and styling. If you’re in Melbourne, be sure to check them out on the walls of the Pop Up shop before it closes!

I continued to work on my playful food photography series, “Graze“. It’s an experimental food photography series in which I give myself some studio time and some “ingredients” to see what kind of playful food creations I can come up with. This was the result, I call it “Frankenfruit”.

Foliolio, my side-photography business which focusses on working with designers who want their work photographed well, quickly gained momentum and I worked with some incredibly talented designers. This was one of my favourites from a colourful shoot with Wild Hen on the design work they did for Fonda Mexican.

With the growth of Foliolio, I found the perfect studio to work out of. This small decision resulted in the ability to create some great work and I’m so glad I decided to find a dedicated space to work out of. It even has a space for my hammock, what more can I say!

In between shoots, things got pretty messy in the studio thanks to a new photo series “spill”, but now everything smells great (ie. like coffee)!

…and I continued to play with my food.

My main photo series of the year was “Handy“, which features creative people and what they do with their hands. One of my favourites was this one with Magdalena Ksiezak who makes adorable paper crafted creations.

Abandoning the seriousness of photography and with this new fascination with hands, I adopted a more playful approach, with a light-hearted spin-off series called, “Stuff you can’t do with Novelty Sized Hands“.

The series fed other ideas, which led to some experiments, including the idea to create an “ice sculpture” using the novelty sized hands as the mould.

I worked with friend and graphic artist, Spencer Harrison AKA Spenceroni on some promotional imagery for Hello Play, his exhibition at No Vacancy Gallery in Melbourne’s CBD. We created a series of playful photographs, showcasing Spencer’s work, all the while “playing” and experimenting as we did.

I was featured on the front cover of PDN Magazine’s January issue. It was an issue on innovation, featuring the work I created with Nate Bolt and the long exposure of his drone over the Californian desert.

A 7 hour drive from Melbourne, Do Lectures Australia once again took place in the beautiful Victorian high country in Glen Valley atPayne’s Hut.  It’s a land without phone reception or internet access, and a sky with seemingly more stars than negative space.  I couldn’t have been happier being back in the thick it all to photograph for another 6 days of incredible people, great conversation and a good community.

A photo posted by Mark Lobo | Melbourne (@marklobo) on Dec 6, 2015 at 1:37pm PST

I started to get a bit more involved with Melbourne’s photography and Instagram community. I met some great folks and got to be a tourist on Phillip Island, shooting late into the night and witnessing thousands of Short-tailed Shearwaters flying overhead. I have to say, it feels like things are coming full circle and am feeling inspired by landscapes once again. I’m looking forward to where this all heads in the new year! Playful, experimental, handy landscapes for people’s walls?

And Lucky last, this ridiculous selfie I took with Phil Ferguson aka @ChiliPhilli when we did our Handy Series shoot.

Have a great holiday season everyone and all the best for 2016!!!

Just 6 months after attending Do Lectures USA and less than a year since my first Do Lectures Australia, I think it’s safe to say that I’m totally hooked on what a fellow Do’er simply referred to as “TEDx, but bush”.   A 7 hour drive from Melbourne, Do Lectures Australia once again took place in the beautiful Victorian high country in Glen Valley at Payne’s Hut.  It’s a land without phone reception or internet access, and a sky with seemingly more stars than negative space.  I couldn’t have been happier being back in the thick it all to photograph for another 6 days of incredible people, great conversation and a good community.  This is what I saw.

This year brought a number of exiting new experiences, both professionally and personally. I walked 100km, photographed under the stars of the Californian desert and surpassed my record for the most number of shoots in a year! It felt so fast though, and I’m still struggling to understand how I managed to pack it all into a year.  Here is my top 14 from 2014 in photographs:

Graze – There were a few new additions to my playful food photography series, including some hot potatoes.

Foliolio – I created a photographic service for designers who want their work photographed well.

Shotkit – I was asked to photograph and talk about some of the gear I use, organised neatly, so I put together a little timelapse video of the process:

360 – Melbourne Hip Hop artist 360, was the subject of an “Ink not Mink” campaign which I photographed for PETA.

Do Lectures Australia and USA – I photographed Do Lectures Australia and also made my way to Do Lectures USA where I met some great minds.  I came back inspired and ready to make some big changes.

Oxfam Trailwalker – A painful and exhausting experience, but a truly rewarding and memorable one was training with a group of friends to walk 100km in 34 hours, to raise money for Oxfam Australia, and we did it! Registrations for Trailwalker 2015 is closing soon, get in quick!

Scott Spark – Scott Spark released his new album, muscle memory, which I had photographed the album artwork and promotional photography for. I had taken some playful photographs on a Nishika 3D lenticular film camera during our shoot, which I scanned and turned into this gif:

Peter Berner – I worked with Australian comedian and TV personality Peter Berner, on some new promotional imagery and finally got to use the yellow backdrop that I had been wanting to use for months!

Phoot Camp Selfie – I photographed the most ambitions selfie I’ve ever attempted as my application to get into Phoot Camp 2014.

…And I got in! I photographed this night portrait of William Wilkinson, late at night in the desert at Phoot Camp.

PDN Cover – One of the most incredible things that came out of the Phoot Camp experience was this collaboration with Nate Bolt, who flew his drone across the desert as we captured it’s light painting.  We ended up getting the cover of the January 2015 issue of PDN!

Travel things – I tacked on a few extra things to my US trip, which included attending Do Lectures USA, a Creative Mornings summit in New York, catching up with colleagues, friends and family and going to Sleep No More (if you’re ever in NYC, it’s a MUST). This is a summary of the experience in one photo:

Squam Lake – Between events, I spent a day out at Squam Lake, New Hampshire.  Exactly what I needed to see me off on the last leg of my journey to New York. I also put a photo essay up on Exposure, which you can see here.

Handy Series – Although still in it’s early days, what started out as a series on gang signs, soon turned into a series on creatives and the work they do with their hands. I’ve got a bunch of people lined up to take part in this project so stay tuned for an update!

And for a special bonus 15th, I wanted to share my favourite gif with a bunch of new friends from different Creative Mornings chapters, getting down and attempting to moonwalk at the Summit After party (photo by smilebooth):

Have a great holiday season everyone and all the best for 2015!!!

7 hours from Melbourne in Victoria’s remote North East is where you’ll find Payne’s Hut, a beautiful getaway for city dwellers and tourists all year round.  Over the long weekend, Payne’s Hut hosted Australia’s first ever Do Lectures, a one of a kind gathering of like minded individuals, ranging from passionate change makers to social entrepreneurs. With just 70 attendees and 20 speakers spending 3 days together, camping and attending talks and workshops, it’s well described as “a microcosmic community that eat, sing, meet, learn but most importantly, get inspired.”  I couldn’t help but draw parallels between Do Lecturers and the “Edgeware” community I was involved with in Brisbane, who even held a conference called “DO Well”.  I was fortunate enough to be a part of the DO community and be inspired by some brilliant minds.  This is what I saw:

And of course, you can’t have a Do Lectures without using every last bit of energy sending everyone off with full body waves: