Hi Friends!

It’s been an extraordinarily busy time for You Can’t Be Serious! We’ve been to far flung corners of the world, Australia, Queensland and our local Indian restaurant. In fact Hailey is in Kenya as I write, no doubt dodging hippos and mosquitos while trying to get the perfect shot. This year looks like being no less exciting, unpredictable and creative than last year, or the year before that. We’ll do our best to keep you up to date with what we’re up to along the way!

One of the most fun assignments we’ve had recently was a pre-Christmas trip to Melbourne for a Queensland client. They wanted us to try to capture a bit of what makes Melbourne… Melbourne! As former residents of that fine city we knew it was a challenge we were definitely up for! Melbourne is a city famous for so many things: cafes, laneways, street art, great architecture, fascinating citizens, restaurants, theatre, culture, sporting venues and occasional sunshine to name but a few. Oh the struggle I had sampling coffee after coffee in an attempt to get the perfect shot. And all the wonderful food we had to force ourselves to eat… And all those wonderful buildings with fascinating details that I could be distracted by! (Speaking of which, if you’d like to see more of my architectural/design/structure pictures from Melbourne and elsewhere, on Instagram, please check out @surfistatomate!)

Anyway, enough from me. Here is a taste of Melbourne. If you haven’t been, I highly recommend it.

We’ll see you again soon!

For us, no trip to Melbourne is complete without catching up with friends. And it’s hard to find friends more fun to spend time with than Neil, Renee, Jotham and Noah.

On a recent trip we decided to do a fun family Christmas photo session with them. Problem: how to do a fun Christmas shoot without resorting to Santa beards, crazy hats, flashing bowties or reindeer antlers?  Together we came up with a different solution: letting them be the gifts themselves! Renee created these very fun but wildly uncomfortable costumes for them to wear and we spent a hilarious afternoon in a park watching them falling over and trying to stand up. Hailey was laughing so hard she found it very difficult to keep them all in the frame! Of course it probably would have been nice to help them, but it was too much fun just pointing and laughing.

Hope you had a good laugh at Christmas time too! Happy New Year!

Yesterday we posted about Goats and Organic farms… but maybe you prefer education and tree seedlings?

Either way check out this fantastic and inspiring site! Useful gifts. I am so proud to have worked with this organization!! If you need a last miniute Christmas gift maybe one of these will be perfect for your special someone?

Find out more here!! Useful gifts!

When I was working in India earlier this year I worked with a fantastic NGO. You can read more about it here and here…

We did this little video interview with a single mother who got given goats! It was delightful to see how grateful and excited she was to share her life with us.

Why not give all the tricky people in your life Goats? Or maybe all the people who don’t know what they want for Christmas? These gifts really do make a huge difference!

Or maybe you prefer the absolutely wonderful and my personal favorite… Organic farming training!! This beautiful man loved his farm and how it has changed his life!

To find out more go to the Useful gifts website! HERE.

I am so very excited to have just completed a new film for a wonderful food photographer!!

Julie Renouf is amazing. Her work is very sought after and featured in many popular books!! You may even have a cook book in your house that she photographed!! Julie is also a beautiful soul who has been a kind and generous friend to me for many years!

I am honoured to know her. Take a look at her fantastic site here.

Here is the film!

We love the Byron hinterland… have you visited the area? I dream of moving there! Today is a wedding from our favorite location -Coorabella at Coorabel.  We love LOVE Coorabella weddings!!

Glen and Elysia are extremely fun and talented musicians and it was our pleasure to photograph their special day. We are also thrilled to have this wedding featured on the ever so wonderful Polkadot Bride blog. Go check HERE for more photos and a little of the story from this gorgeous couples special day…

Ali and Chris are delightful fun.  I enjoyed walking the streets of Bardon and watching their little dog Poppy do the most amazing hand-stands-to-pee tricks! (you will see what I mean!) AMAZING!

I love engagement sessions! Sometimes after spending time photographing a couple I don’t want to go home… I just want to sit and chat about books and have tea out of cool retro cups.

Ali runs a gorgeous vintage shop at the Woolloongabba Antique Centre. So naturally their home is filled with fun things! These two are wonderful together. Peas in a pod.

About time we posted a wedding!

Here are the adorable Emily and Adam. (Adam you’re not that adorable but Emily has enough for 2 and you’re very handsome!)

Hope you enjoy this cute couple as much as we did.

The beautiful flowers are by this clever company ‘Green and Bloom’.

Can you feel summer is nearly here? So excited! Let’s all go swimming!

But first you will need to buy some gorgeous swimwear from the super cool Billi Jade swimwear! I did this cute little promo video for them. Hope you enjoy!

To find out more head to Billi Jade on Facebook.

Happy summer!

I am seeing everywhere I go the beginning of Christmas mayhem! Yes indeedy, only 10 weeks apparently and Christmas will be here! EEEK!

While I was in India I had the pleasure of working with a fantastic organization TEAR Australia who with their amazing partners are doing all they can to help transform the lives of the poor and marginalized in India. It was my honor to hear and see the stories of communities being empowered with the knowledge, confidence and tools to work towards their own development.
I took so many photos of sooo many great projects. This one ties in nicely for Christmas! Actually a lot of them do and I will feature a few more shortly.
So what about buying all your family and friends chicken’s for families in India? It enables them to have healthy food for their families and if they get a few chickens they even can make a little income selling the eggs.
Here is one beautiful family, who were given chickens through one of TEARs fantastic India partner projects. They even helped them build a coop to house their growing chickens in! How about going and buying a really useful gift?? Here!!

I also just finished up making a promo video for TEARs USEFUL GIFTS campaign. A fantastic way to share with your friends and family a great ‘gift’ idea.
Take a look and if you like it please do share it around. Also… if you don’t like chickens maybe you would prefer buying an organic kitchen garden starter kit?? Or a goat?

I have to say special thanks to Aaron for making music for me and Natala for being a prop and assistant star and for the lovely Pancho for editing up a storm!