More Than Just Photography: 13 Years of Dance, Events and Adventure

Dance features pretty heavily in my photography, as you'll probably have noticed if you've looked at my website or social media. But there's a backstory to that connection that you may not know.

Ever since I was little, dance has always been a part of my life. I originally started with jazz ballet, transitioned into salsa and eventually found my love for hip hop.

Through my love of dance and attending a dance competition back in 2012, I connected with a beautiful community of people. Through a series of events and connections, I found myself volunteering and learning the ropes of how to run a hip hop dance competition called Battlegrounds.

Little did I know back then just how much that one experience would shape my life, where it would take me and the incredible opportunities it would eventually lead to.

From Volunteering to Event Management

Two years later, I'd gone from volunteering at one of Adelaide's biggest dance competitions, learning multiple front-of-house roles, to becoming a core member of our event crew, running dance competitions, workshops and variety shows across Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and the Philippines.

Along the way, I gained enough confidence and experience to start running my own mini dance competitions, fundraising events and hosting workshops with international dance artists for dance crews I was assisting at the time and the wider local dance community.

Through all of this, I learnt event management, social media marketing and promotions, artist liaison, sponsorship, community engagement and so much more.

In 2016, I moved to Melbourne, and because Melbourne is pretty much an event hub, I found myself getting involved in events of all different types, shapes and sizes pretty much every weekend.

From ticketing, front of house and hosting to promotional work, brand ambassador roles, event setup and pack down, customer service and project management, I was constantly learning and gaining experience across so many different areas of the events industry.

What I never would have imagined at the time was just how much all of this would contribute to growing my photography business.

Not only did it teach me how to see events from so many different perspectives, but it also helped me build connections, gain word-of-mouth referrals and eventually work with event clients as their photographer too.

As my photography skills and business continued to grow, it was only natural that photography would become part of my involvement with Battlegrounds as well.

Around 2019, I started photographing our Melbourne competitions and the finals in Sydney, all while continuing my event management responsibilities behind the scenes.

It meant juggling multiple roles, sometimes switching between organising an event and capturing it through my lens, but having an understanding of both sides made the two work hand in hand.

Building a Dance Community in the Philippines

One of the biggest parts of my journey with Battlegrounds was the four years I spent travelling to the Philippines multiple times a year.

My role involved everything from event organising, dancer registration and liaison, running workshops and networking to working on sponsorship opportunities, marketing and building our brand presence in the Philippines.

But one of the things I loved most was helping build and grow the dance community.

I worked closely with dance crews, helping them understand how to market themselves, write sponsorship proposals, fundraise to travel to the Australian finals, secure paid gigs and create opportunities for themselves beyond just competing.

We even helped create opportunities for dance crews to appear on television networks, giving them exposure they may not otherwise have had.

It wasn't just about running competitions. It was about helping these dancers see what was possible and giving them the tools and knowledge to create more opportunities for themselves.

Over time, I also built my own presence within the dance community in the Philippines, becoming recognised through my work as an event organiser and the competition's representative, while continuing to build relationships with dancers, crews and people across the industry.

But what made these experiences so special wasn't necessarily the competitions themselves.

It was the people.

Getting to watch dancers grow and develop over the years as they continued returning to our competitions was incredibly rewarding. Some of the most memorable experiences were travelling to different regions to visit crews, getting to know them outside the competition environment, learning about how they lived, what inspired them and why they were so passionate about what they did.

Those personal experiences and connections are something I'll always value, and they're a huge part of why I've continued doing this for so many years.

Thirteen Years Later, Still the Same Team

Fast forward 13 years, and I'm still involved with the same Battlegrounds team, except now I get to apply my photography, marketing and content creation skills alongside all the event management experience I've gained over the years.

And one of the things I value most about this whole journey is the friendships I've made along the way.

The same event crew I started this adventure with are now people I consider family.

We come from Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, New Zealand and the Philippines, and despite living in different places, we continue coming together to do what we love.

We've shared so many incredible experiences, challenges, long days, late nights and plenty of laughs over the years. I honestly couldn't imagine having done all of this with a better group of people.

As our competition has grown and expanded, so has the vision.

With visa restrictions making it increasingly difficult for international dancers to travel to Australia, we had to rethink how and where we hosted our world finals.

And that's what eventually led us to Dubai!

Taking Battlegrounds to Dubai!

For the first time, we were taking our world finals to Dubai, bringing dancers together from over 15 countries across the globe to compete for the champion title. And my role? Well, I had my event organiser hat on, my social media manager hat, my content creator hat AND my photographer hat.

We spent a week in Dubai, which let me tell you... was HOTTT!!! We had four days of back-to-back event activities, from registrations and media days to workshops, the opening ceremony, preliminaries and the grand final.

But what made Dubai particularly memorable wasn't just the competition itself. It was everything we had to navigate to actually pull it off.

The lead-up was probably one of the most challenging we'd experienced. With the regional conflict and uncertainty around travel and safety at the time, there were so many things up in the air. We didn't even have our flights booked until the week before!

We were quite literally organising things on the fly, even after arriving in Dubai, not that you would ever know it.

Not only were we navigating running a major international competition in a country where none of our core event team had experience, but the logistics were completely different from Australia and other countries we'd worked in.

Things we'd normally expect to be included with venue hire or event services suddenly came at an additional cost. And when I say everything, I mean EVERYTHING! Add to that bumping in at midnight the night before the competition because we couldn't access the venue any earlier, then getting up at the crack of dawn to get straight back into it.

Oh, and taking upwards of 6,000 photos a day. That was fun to shortlist afterwards... NOT!

If something could go wrong, it probably did.

But having one of the most versatile and multiskilled event teams I've ever had the pleasure of working with meant we did what we've always done. We adapted, problem-solved, worked together and got the job done.

And from the audience's perspective, you probably would never have known there were issues happening behind the scenes.

Having been thrown in the deep end so many times over the years, where we've had to learn, adjust and pivot on the fly, experiences like these have shaped me into the event professional I am today. In fact, if an event runs too smoothly now, it almost feels wrong because I'm so used to something unexpected happening and having to put out mini fires! But I think what made Dubai so special was seeing how our team came together despite everything we'd faced in the lead-up and throughout the competition.

Watching dancers from different countries come together, unite, support one another and make the absolute most of the experience filled us with so much pride. Seeing everyone enjoying themselves and knowing we'd managed to pull it all off made every challenge, sleepless night and stressful moment completely worth it.

The Challenge of Being an Event Organiser AND Photographer

One of the biggest challenges I face whenever I'm photographing a Battlegrounds competition is remembering that I can't always be in two places at once. Having been one of the senior members of our event team for so many years, my natural instinct whenever something goes wrong is to jump up and help fix it. And trust me, there's always something happening behind the scenes that needs someone's attention!

But when you're also the main photographer, it's not always that simple. The competition doesn't stop because there's an issue backstage.

The dancers are still performing, and for many of them, the photographs are something they genuinely look forward to seeing afterwards. They share them proudly with their friends, families and communities, and for some dancers, these images become part of how they promote themselves and their crews.

From the competition's perspective, photography is also a huge part of our ongoing marketing and brand development.

Our winning teams often feature on the following year's promotional flyers, so imagine stepping away from the camera to deal with an issue and missing the winning crew's performance!

That's the constant balancing act.

As much as I trust the rest of our team to handle things, it's not always easy to switch off the event organiser side of my brain.

One thing that will almost always have me wanting to put the camera down is a first aid situation, particularly when it involves a dancer who may not speak English as their first language. Over the years, I've gained a lot of experience assisting dancers in these situations, and it's something I've always taken seriously.

So you'll still occasionally see me putting the camera down, running backstage or side stage, quickly helping deal with an issue and then getting straight back to photographing the competition. Especially when we don't have our full event team with us.

It can be exhausting juggling both responsibilities, but also extremely rewarding and it's also something that has taught me so much about working under pressure, prioritising and understanding what matters most in the moment.

Capturing More Than Just the Performance

The photographs I captured in Dubai are probably some of my favourite competition images to date, and we've continued using them across our marketing materials.

I think having a background in dance, including previous experience coaching and managing dance crews, gives me a slightly different perspective when photographing competitions.

Of course, I'm always looking for those picture-perfect moments, the big tricks, the showstoppers and the performances that make an audience go WOW!

But I'm also looking for the dancers who are simply giving it everything they've got. The expressions, the energy, the genuine enjoyment, the connections between teammates and those little moments that tell a story beyond the choreography. Sometimes it's those photographs that end up being my favourites.

And that's exactly what makes shortlisting photographs from dance competitions so difficult!

I want to showcase everyone at their best, whether they're the winning crew or a team that's simply worked incredibly hard to get there.

Thankfully, I only photograph a few competitions a year now, nowhere near the amount I used to.

Because while people often assume editing is the most time-consuming part of photography, sometimes it's actually narrowing down thousands of images when you want to share so many of them!

Seeing Events From Both Sides of the Camera

I think one of the biggest advantages my event management background gives me as a photographer is that I've quite literally experienced events from almost every perspective.

When I'm not running events, I'm attending them. When I'm not attending them, there's a good chance I'm photographing them, whether that's professionally or simply because I enjoy it. And each of those experiences changes how I look at an event.

I don't just think about what the organiser wants photographed.

I also think about what I would want to see as someone considering attending that event in the future.

What would make me want to buy a ticket?

What would make me wish I'd been there?

What little details help tell the story of the experience?

The signage, sponsor recognition, atmosphere and little details that someone has spent so much time planning are all things I look for when photographing events. They help tell the complete story, and they're why branding is something I'm particularly passionate about.

But just as importantly, I love capturing genuine moments. Nothing overly posed or forced. Just natural, candid, documentary-style photography that shows what an event was really like. The atmosphere, the people, the excitement, the unexpected moments and everything in between.

And I love that my experience allows me to share knowledge in both directions.

When I'm working in event management, I can bring my photographer's perspective to clients, helping them think about how their event will look visually, what moments should be captured and how their branding and content can be used afterwards.

And when I'm working as a photographer, I can draw on my event management experience to share ideas, identify opportunities and offer suggestions that clients may not have considered.

Sometimes it's the smallest things that can make a big difference, whether that's improving how something is presented, thinking about the event flow or planning ahead for content that will be valuable long after the event has finished.

I've always loved being able to share that knowledge, especially when it helps make a client's event better or gives them something valuable they can take into their next event.

For me, photography isn't simply about turning up, taking photographs and leaving.

It's about understanding the bigger picture, the experience being created and how the images I capture can continue telling that story long after everyone has gone home.

From the Philippines to Dubai... and Next Up, Hong Kong!

When I look back at that first dance competition I attended in 2012, I never would have imagined just how much it would change my life.

What started as a love of dance turned into years of friendships, international travel, event management experience, photography opportunities and the chance to meet and work with so many incredibly talented people from around the world.

Thirteen years later, I'm still working alongside many of the same people, still learning, still adapting and still finding myself in the middle of the organised chaos that makes events so much fun.

And while my photography has expanded into corporate events, live music, entertainment, commercial photography and so much more, dance competitions will always hold a special place in my portfolio.

Because they're such a big part of how I got here.

And the adventure isn't over yet.

From the Philippines to Dubai... and next up, Hong Kong 2027!!