Refocus Retreat 2023

Sep 13

As part of my visit to the Ballarat Bienale, I attended the Refocus Retreat (RR).

The RR is a conference for female photographers, it was partly a response to the heavily male-dominated conferences being run back in 2014. It quickly became super popular, and its founder and organiser Kym Vulling, loves the welcoming space it has created. I am honoured to be one of a few blokes that attend, being a trade sponsor gets me in the door.

It was a wild ride of information, inspiration and camaraderie over the three days. The program was well packed with sessions, some running concurrently. I’ll give you the list of what I attended and my thoughts, and links to find out more. I’d love all to attend this, so watch out, we expect an announcement soon about the 2024 and 2025 conference.

You’ll see some hiking photos, each morning Janice House led a brave group of early risers out and about…I loved this.

> Cut and Paste with Penny Ryan (https://instagram.com/rage_collage): this was a fun little aside that go attendees thinking creatively. For me, I was always looking for the undo button!
> Michelle Grace Hunder (https://www.michellegracehunder.com) keynote: Michelle works with the music industry photographing performers, she talked about getting your foot in the door and developing relationships.
> Story Telling with Annemie Tonken (https://www.thiscantbethathard.com): We partered with Pic-Time to run this ice-breaker event. 7 or so attendees had a print printed by us, and then they talked to their image and told the story behind it. A great idea!
> Annemie then ran a keynote the following morning and talked about her personal journey triggered by a series of terrible events, that led her to developing a more hands-off automated process for dealing with her photography clients. It was excellent, there was so much that could be applied to every business.
> Our sponsored speaker, Morgane Cazaubon (https://www.petitevisuals.com.au), was my next sit in: Morgane is harnessing her ADHD and amazing multi-tasking skills to provide a mixed media coverage of events. While she predominantly shoots weddings, Morgane also works in the fashion industry, and this is getting her more diverse work. She is working towards shooting at the Cannes Film Festival next year. At any one time, Morgane can be found with two digital cameras with different lenses, a Sony digital to capture motion, and a film camera grabbing stills. It’s a remarkable system she has developed, and being able to offer it has opened some fascinating doors.
> I then sat in on Annemie Tonken’s (https://www.thiscantbethathard.com) Six Step Simple Sales System, which is a how to presentation version of her Keynote…it was amazing. Really worth adopting.
> I presented a short session “The Lab Low Down”, essentially going through the in’s and out’s of a relationship with a lab. I had a blast, and got some of these points across to a group of around 20.
> That afternoon Lauren Crooke (https://www.noodscapes.com) presented on one of her projects Nudescape Photography and Body Reclamation. It was a really moving session seeing how the project was changing opinions and lives. She also hinted that she may set up one of the group nude photos for the attendees if they were inclined….
> Michelle Grace Hunder (https://www.michellegracehunder.com) then ran a light painting workshop. After years of seeing, what I thought was all the iterations of light painting, Michelle knocked it out of the park with a demonstration and assisted others to learn the techniques.
> Katie Kolenberg (https://www.katiek.com.au) and Rachel Callendar (https://rachelcallander.com) gave a cool session about channeling creativity into your life and work. They believe (rightly so) that everyone is creative, and it’s a power we need to encourage. Rachel showed these cool pictures she’d made when her cat had presented her with some dead mice…Rachel took the opportunity to dress them in costume and make a portrait series!
> Morgane Cazaubon (https://www.petitevisuals.com.au) spoke on Art Direction and Inspiration. It was a super practical session encouraging attendees to make a picture based on an image from one of dozens of art books Morgane brought along. I’ve sat in so many inspiration sessions, it was great to have our hands held and actually make something.
> Katrina Ferguson (https://www.katrinaferguson.com.au) spoke about Imagen AI powered editing (https://imagen-ai.com). This was super exciting…Katrina is representing Imagen and demonstrated the set up and process of this automatic editing tool. Here is the future friends!
> Sally Brownbill (https://thebrownbilleffect.com) gave a hilarious talk about her life and career around connecting creatives, it was so cool, she had us rolling in the isles. She even gave the ASL (sign language interpreter) a hell of a job with some dirty jokes!
> After the conference dinner Julie Kimpton of Nikon (https://www.instagram.com/jooliekimpton), set up some games where some of us had to retreat famous photographs…with a liberal amount of booze this became a heap of fun.
> Finally for me, I sat in on Vanessa Gerrans’ of the Ballarat International Foto Bienalle’s presentation about the event and its history. (https://ballaratfoto.org)