Shannon and Paul Wedding

Earlier this year, I had the delicious pleasure of photographing the wedding of my dear friend from high school, Shannon, and her dream-come-true Paul.

The wedding was held on the beautiful cattle property of Shan's family: picture meadows of long grass with slender eucalypts, magical riverbeds, a lake brimming after recent rains and red dust roads to walk on at sunset. They were surrounded and supported by good people - SUCH good people - all with their own gifts, all with warm smiles and huge hearts. I spent a week out there, mostly alternating between huge gaspfuls of laughter and deep conversations with the myriad of lovely souls who were there. (A special shoutout to the River Girls, Magnificent Moira, Hot Bachy and Shan's parents for the most precious times possible).

Paul and Shan promised to love each other for this lifetime and more by the lake near sunset. Shan rode in to the sweet, emotion-filled ceremony on a palamino stallion, looking every bit like an etheric fairy princess coming to find her fairy prince.

I hope you delight in these photos... I hope they document the joy, love, magic and light that was there that day and always.




Fairy Shan and her fairy cousin...


The bride's dad




































Their first dance...
just as they will dance for the rest of their lives...


Rings on table decorations...

And my favourite image of the day...

The lovely Paul - rough, funny, country boy Paul - broke down in tears during the ceremony and couldn't finish his vows. Shannon would wrap him up in her arms, and they would giggle together as tears streamed down his face...





You know you are in love
when you see the world in her eyes,
and her eyes everywhere in the world.

- David Levesque

Love From The Jungle

There are so many stories tumbling inside me. So many stories to be heard, known, understood. So many stories to make a home inside this soul of mine.

Stories of how the light looks at Brisbane dawn, seeping into you, waking you long before you are ready. Stories of sisterhood and fierce love and unexpected tenderness. Stories of sushi and curry and cupcakes. Stories of hospital beds and meds and a ferociously beautiful octogenarian named Phyllis sharing a hospital room with three mad sisters. Stories of walks in long green and black skirts, patterned with elephants, walks waist-high through the jungle of Brisbane's wildflowers and wilderness, magnificence and mangroves. Stories of taxi drivers who break your heart or set it free with love for humanity. Stories of wildness. And laughter that leaves you breathless and falling into trees, the kind of laughter only sisters know. Stories of hands clutching crystals. Stories of past lives and presentness and priestesses and puppies. Stories of seeing beautiful women and luscious men in my eyes, heart, camera lens.

Stories of walking through the city at daybreak with a thirsty soul, following your feet past ruptured concrete to a tiny breath of Mama Earth, a park carved into the bustle of a hill. Stories of butterflies and birds. Stories of old friends and new friends. Stories of seeing an old friend and telling him: you know who I once dreamed of being? I am that now. Stories of a picnic in an abandoned lot/park/fairy garden, a gathering of rainbow precious women. Stories of pyjama parties and making dreams come true. And the brave pleasure of being yourself, even when that self seems faintly otherworldly. Stories of pain and healing, vulnerability and loveliness. Stories of nestling with my sisters, legs and hands akimbo, revelling in our holy trinity.



So many stories. I do not know yet how to tell them, how to speak them, how to hear them for what they really are. They instead are streams of silk fluttering around inside me, and I clutch at them, threading long fingers through them, grasping them into a ball. And then I let them go, I breathe and I sit. I watch, knowing instead that on their own, with time, the silken threads will weave and warp into a quilt of understanding and wisdom. Maybe I could show you the quilt when it has discovered itself. Maybe I could share it in adorned squares: of photographs, of the little stories, of moments.

But for now, there are breaths to be breathed, and a deeply precious life to be loved.



All is well,
with love,
Leonie

Dear One

this came out just after i wrote this...


Dear Clinty,

I've been dreaming about you lately.

You've been in my dreams and close to my skin, and when I awake I find you're not just around me but inside me now.

I think, "you are my biggest brother" - not only my oldest, but the biggest - the man who is bigger than the stars and clusters of planets and a field lying yellow in the summer. You are bigger than exquisite possibilities and truth and body, and you teach us that.

A few weeks ago, a boy I knew when I was a teenager died. And he made me think of you. He would have been nearly the same age as you when you died. I turn your eternal age of 25 in a few short weeks. I used to think you were old enough to die - that 25 years is a good go at life. And yet, here I am on the birthing precipice of that age, and there is still so much to do. So much to live and feel and experience and know and do.

I dreamed that you died again, and I began to wail that I was losing you all over again. And the stars came out, and I stopped wailing, and I realised I knew how to grieve now.

My grieving made me yearn to dance, my bare feet thrashing the gravel, my sweat becoming stars, my heart pumping long, loving bursts of blood through me. I wanted to dance you into heaven, I wanted to celebrate you in the ways I now know how to.

I didn't want everyone to go home, to sit in our silent rooms on our own and cry, to not know what to say, to feel that the experience was too uncomfortable to sit with. So I gathered our family and friends together in a big circle near the shed. And we drummed, we sang, we danced, we prayed, we spoke, guiding you home to Great Spirit.

I danced you into me, in that dream.

I danced until my arms were a-swirl and every precious possibility, every piece of love, every dream, every promise, every lifetime was awake.

Today, I wake up and you are with me.

Today, I wake up and something I want falls through, but I feel you beside me, smiling down a thousand lifetimes on me, telling me that everything is sacred, everything is real, everything is new, and everything will happen.

I want to photograph you today. I will photograph the stars and the grass and the great looming trees instead. You are in them.

All My Love,

Bony


And then the sun came out and glowed through the rain
and the whole world looked like a miracle...

All The Ways The Universe Rocks

This is my beautiful little sister Maryanne.

And this is the story of how the Universe totally rocks, in totally unforeseen, unknown and intensely loving ways.

A couple of months ago the opportunity came up for me at work to attend a business conference in Brisbane, where my little sister goes to university. I jumped at it, thinking I could spend a bit of time with her and a number of lovely friends who live there.

And then my little Me-Me got sick with tonsillitis. Again. For the seventh time this year. So now she is having an operation and needs her kin around.

And guess what? It's when I'm there.

And guess what? I just got given extra holidays to tack onto my weekend.

And the day before I need to leave, my big sister is flying in to stay.

So the blessing and the miracle is that I will be in Brisbane for a week to work for a little bit, to hang out with my little sis, tell her hilarious stories, make her jelly, feed her ice-cream and just be with her.

It is a joy that I can do this. That this crazy little set of circumstances has worked out so the sisters can be together for each other. And it is the tenderest honour that I can look after my little one when she needs me.

Sometimes the most healing thing of all is just to be present to love each other.

This Universe leaves me breathless with beauty,
Leonie

Courtney <3 Rhys

A couple of months ago I met the deliriously delightful Courtney (otherwise known as FruzzlePuff by those in the know) at the Bobby Flynn concert. She wore giant flowers in her curls, taught the support band how to play harmonica and made friends with us when she came around offering free giant pizza. I think somehow in our glittered cowgirl hats she recognised us as her tribe.



A few days ago I had the ginormous pleasure of photographing her and her lovely love, Rhys, down by the river. I was so enchanted by their love story ~ they had met in their first class of drama in college, and been together for the three years since. They are tenderly young at nineteen, and they touched me with their warmth, love and play. Courtney is vibrant and bodacious, like a rainbow bunch of gerberas and Rhys' love for her shines through his eyes.



When we rocked up to the river, I said to them "Just how wet do you guys want to go today?", eyeing Courtney's white leggings with silk bows and Rhys' ninja cool boots. "We're up for adventure" they replied. And they were! These pair were the most adventurous, open and beautiful models a girl could hope for. Wade across the rocks just to get to a tiny island? Sure, no worries. Crawl through rapids? We are there! Stand fully clothed in the middle of the river? No problems!



They were.so.precious. Leonie hearts them BIG.

Make yourself a delicious cup of tea (maybe vanilla green tea, or dandelion with mint and ginger, or chamomile) and settle in for some lush soul-eye candy...
Allow yourself to ~breathe~ and be swept gently down the river of love...
















my favourite photo of courtney... she looks like an incredible ancient water nymph goddess...








i love the power of this image...



Afterwards we found overselves a rocking stormwater drain for me to crawl down, just to get my stormwater drain kicks (and capture the beautiful light that seeps down them).






so we found this sign...

My greatest hope with my photography is to document the divine in every soul... to show them their own possibilities and beauty. When I look through these photos I see so much of both these things that my heart grows big.





Fruzzle, Rhys ~ you guys are beautiful.
Thank you for the honour of photographing your love and your joyful souls.



Love,
Leonie

~ You can see more photos from the portrait session at Flickr
~ Have a remarkable weekend... trust the beauty and love in you.
I'm off to the farm for three days. Paint, read, drum, bushwalk, riverwalk. Repeat.