My love for photography and wild open spaces comes from my parents, and growing up in the Namibian desert. My father was a keen photographer and geologist, and my mother an artist. We camped and lived out of a van while he carried out his geology work and my mother painted the wilderness in watercolours.

About Michelle

Curious Creatures Photography has been officially going since around April 2014. It was an obsession that was born alongside my first baby in 2013, and has grown and evolved so much since then. What’s at its heart hasn’t changed though - the love of natural feeling, evocative photos that capture the different stages of life.

My Background

Before I had Ben, I worked for a few years at Hotel Tresanton in St Mawes - on reception and in housekeeping. If you don’t know it, it’s a charming luxury boutique hotel owned by Olga Polizzi. There I helped to look after many wealthy and famous guests (I even met my idol, Kate Winslet once). I loved the idyllic vibes of life on the Roseland Peninsula, and have lived in the area for the almost 20 years I’ve been in Cornwall.

Before that I had a career as a PA in Cape Town, South Africa to the Director of an Accounting and Auditing firm, and also in a PR Agency. Before that, I spent 3 years backpacking and working in Israel, Egypt, Indonesia, and New Zealand. Before that, I had a great life growing up in Johannesburg (and Namibia in my first years).

When I was a kid I imagined one day being a writer like Enid Blyton or Jessica Fletcher (from Murder She Wrote), or a detective like Nancy Drew. Other dream jobs included photojournalism for National Geographic, being a performing artist of some kind, or living a bohemian lifestyle in the mountains or wilderness somewhere. Doing something creative and having freedom from convention always felt important.

I’ve always been an avid reader, with a deep fascination about psychology (and understanding how others experience the world) and spirituality. I love things that feel wholesome, beautiful and meaningful. My heroes are rugged characters who have suffered, been to the edge, grown, come back and told the truth. Anything that leans towards wild, primitive honesty moves me.

I love folk music, art nouveau movies, documentaries and just walking in the country or along the coast. If I could do anything (in a parallel universe perhaps), I would travel, just meandering around the world with my camera - off the beaten track, no direction or home. I’ve discovered that Buddhism resonates and study the dharma and practise meditation and mindfulness.

Adventure is part of who I am.

Having children is the most crazy, sobering, wonderful and brutal adventure of all! There’s no escaping yourself when a mini ‘you’ is around and the journey takes you into every crevice and corner imaginable. I love that I get to work with families and parents who are either just beginning this journey or well on the way. Nothing is more important than this job, as parents, and if photography helps to bond and preserve some memories of moments along the way, I’m so happy I can make something beautiful, wholesome and meaningful of it for others.

When I became a mother

I can still remember the moment my son was placed on my chest for the first time after having an emergency C-section. His warm squidgy weight and the ‘realness’ of his clammy little body was the most reassuring thing I’d ever felt. It’s a surreal but visceral memory, that moment. I thought ‘oh, here you are!’ feeling as if I’d known him my whole life - as if he’d always existed somehow, in my soul.

How can anything prepare you for that kind of love? Like a piece of you now literally exists as another person? I felt like I finally belonged in my life, because he was here.

At last! A proper reason for being.