for art’s sake
i spy... You have to love someone who’s so excited about their new camera that they immediately post photos of it on Facebook. Writer: Megan Spencer - Photographs: David Field and Sean Batty Just as he’s torn open the cardboard box, packaging foam spilling out, under the post: “This come in today”. That’s Sean Batty for you, one of Bendigo’s most inspired and enthusiastic young photographers. He’s a busy man, holding down a full-time job at family firm TyrePlus, with a bustling family of three kids under eight. You’d think he wouldn’t have much time to talk photography, let alone take the hundreds of photos he does, often on a weekly basis. But talking to Sean you’ll find the conversation inevitably wends its way back to his passion, swiftly traversing everything from favorite locations and his beloved “gadgets”, to the challenges of digital gear and his aspirations towards fine art photography. You may have already come across his images. Sean is one of Bendigo’s most prolific and indemand portrait photographers, who spends his spare time creating luscious images of tots, bubs, families and wedding parties. His work schedule – around job and family – goes something like: weekends and late arvos for shoots, with early mornings and nights set aside for photo editing. That is, once the kids are in bed and the house has shrunk back to quiet. Sean’s equally busy partner Nicola also helps run the photography business, My Little Eye, which Sean says initially started from necessity. “2008 was when I first picked up a camera and consciously ‘composed’ a photo. I wanted to take pictures of my daughter,” he said. At the time, the kiddie photo ‘studio’ at the local shopping centre didn’t appeal. “It just wasn’t very creative,” he says reluctantly, not
78 | Bendigo Magazine - Issue 27
wanting to seem critical of his more traditional peers. Nor did the idea of dropping “around $700”. Instead he and Nicole went looking at cameras, “and just decided that we would do it ourselves”. He hasn’t looked back. “It all came about from word of mouth really,” he explains about My Little Eye. “I put some of my shots up on facebook and Red Bubble, and someone asked me to take photos.” He invested in better equipment, so that he could deliver high quality shots. “My first professional job was a family portrait. I was really nervous because I had to go out to an unfamiliar location. I had 10 seconds to scope out the place before people start asking me ‘what are you going to do?’” “It was a big job, over 10 people – three sisters, plus partners and kids. It was at a winery, and very picturesque. But it was in the cooler months so it was muddy!” he grins, remembering what could have gone wrong. Much as the job requires a certain degree of control – choosing locations, the best time of day for light, watching the weather and so on – Sean also likes to take his cues from what’s in front of him, much a like a documentary photographer. It means he has to be ready for anything. “It’s the moments in between,” he says, “when people are not conscious of the camera – that’s where you need to keep them.” “And kids create that moment anyway,” he smiles relishing the idea of finding spontaneity to capture, around the posed shots that are ‘expected’ of him. “You don’t get those moments at ‘Pixie Palace’.”
Looking at Sean’s work, you very much get the sense of his appreciation for the what goes into making a great portrait. And for the human face, in all of its perfect/imperfect glory. Available light is his kind of signature. He’s not shy with texture and colour either. Sean prefers not to shoot in an artificial environment. So you’ll often find him in obscure places around Bendigo, like the back of an old church, snapping away at a kids playing on grass with a corrugated iron shed as backdrop. But it’s in his fine art work where Sean breaks loose, many miles away from the gentleness of his human muses. Sean’s landscapes are dramatic and highly manipulated. They don’t creep up on you – they command your attention like a thundercrack. His tip shot for instance. It’s the perfect example of the work he loves to do when he has the time – usually on the way home from a shoot. Nothing short of magnificent… Taken at Eaglehawk landfill, a stack of dumped mattresses lays beneath a dramatic, blackened sky. This pile of ‘the forsaken’ is illuminated by a classic hand of God light breaking free from the clouds, reclaiming the refuse back into the fold. It’s a shot to make other photographers weep. His pictures around Bendigo – including one of majestic Rosalind Park at Christmas – is equally impressive. As are his seascapes when he and Nicola take the kids away. It seems Sean just can’t stop taking photos of the world. Lucky he’s got such a hungry little eye... My Little Eye Photography 0426 280 380 www.mylittleeyebendigo.com ■