Kiss Photography

PO Box 307 Alderley QLD 4051

07 33551576

 

Margherita Gregory from Kiss Photography - Bio

It was 1985, I was 18 at the time and was accepted into the Queensland College of Art after two years of studying photography at Trinity College, Lismore. It was a big adventure because I was from a small country town on the outskirts of Lismore and had to move to Brisbane.

 

I moved to Brisbane and in 1986 started QCA Morningside studying Associate Diploma in Arts majoring in Photography.
It was a two year course... absolutely brilliant... and that was where Michael and I met. We also met a group of amazing people and we instantly made great friends. Over six of them are lifelong friends that we see, you know, we keep in touch with on a regular basis including one of the tutors who really became a close friend as well.

Michael and I became best mates at college and we graduated together in 1987.

In 1988 I was working in hospitality and also doing photography on the side for fashion shoots and weddings. In 1990, after finishing and staying for a bit in Brisbane, we moved to Cairns to work in the tourism industry. Interestingly enough, Michael was a bungee jump photographer for AJ Hacket Bungy and I worked on the Ocean Spirit as a hostess on the boat and in underwater photography. I loved scuba diving and the photography under water, absolutely beautiful!  So that’s when I got into photographing the Great Barrier Reef and I always wanted to scuba dive with whales. I still haven’t done that yet, it’s on the to-do list.

I also worked in my own side business taking the boarding shots for tourists and selling them. Being the early 90's it was too early for digital, I used film and all the prints were printed and sold to tourists that afternoon. That was a fun business meeting people from all over the world. 

 

The other thing I did in Cairns was Japanese weddings. They were huge! At the time a lot of Japanese couples would come, lots every weekend. They needed a formal-like wedding where we took exactly the same shots for everyone and then made an album for them. So there was a huge market in Japanese weddings in Cairns and I also did the occasional local wedding around the Barrier Reef and on the Cairns waterfront.

That was really fun and we enjoyed all that. Then we decided to head on overseas, so in 1993 we went to Indonesia and then onto Rome for six weeks and then we travelled around Europe for several months.

As you do we ended up in London and some of our friends from QCA had set up a photography studio in Kentish town. So when we got there we had photography friends to stay with and to work with. That was a good grounding.

We ended up buying a place in London and living there for five years and in that time I photographed quite a few weddings, actors portfolios and portraits, and worked in the hospitality industry as well.

One of our very close friends from college, Louis Girardi became quite well recognized internationally for his still-life advertising photography and was regularly hired by Conde Nast, Smirnoff and Tatler. Sadly he has since passed away.

In 1997 we returned to Australia. I started looking at other ways to diversify and continue people photography. So, I started working in the hospitals because I had a newborn baby and started taking newborn baby photographs in the Lismore Base hospital.

 

Not long after we moved back to Brisbane and ended doing the baby photography in many of Brisbane's hospitals. Whilst there I also pioneered a contemporary black and white style within the company. Instead of doing those set-up colour shots I set up a sleeping baby in black and white, much more contemporary, lovely style. So I did that while our babies were young.

We established Kiss Photography in 2001, and were covering all styles of photography at the time. Commercial photography, people photography, events, portraits, weddings, advertising, stock, art - anything & everything basically.

With time we gravitated into weddings started attracting lots of weddings. And instead of just doing everything, I started to niche into the wedding market only, as well as portraits.

Around 2005 we looked at it and decided to niche even further and focused purely on family portraits.

 

I've always found it to be a very rewarding area to work in.

Fourteen years later, Kiss Photography is a well established family portrait specialist business in Brisbane. And I still love it!!