SHANE SHEPHERD PHOTOGRAPHY

The shoot with the awesome Corey & Mel is being featured on Hello May very soon!

Here’s another one of my faves from their session.

My good friend Noah is the wolf pack of one behind the amazing Great Earthquake, from Melbourne. He came to visit recently with his beautiful wife Allyse and play a few shows. Good times were had.

Firstly, picture the skinniest kid you can think of, give him a Kurt Kobain hair cut, army pants and an oversized black t-shirt. Don’t forget to add in some serious acne that looks like ‘Pizza the Hut’ from the 80′s movie Spaceballs.

It’s me. It’s 1994.

When I was a teenager I read countless books, listened to Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana, I’d write songs, play the guitar and sing my heart out. My first love though was writing. Before I could even play a chord on a guitar I’d already filled a pile of notebooks with stories of teenage angst, geekyness and failures at finding a girlfriend. For most of my time at school I was a loner, a wolf pack of one. I didn’t follow trends all that much, I did my own thing. I observed, alot. Everything I saw in the world around me I’d write down in one of those old notebooks.

One day I decided I would try an experiment, something that until then I hadn’t done all that much of. Everyday I would do one thing that scared me. There were no specific rules, just that I had to do this one thing once a day.

The first day I said ‘hello’ to a girl named Summer in my Maths class, she said ‘hi’ back. I walked away smiling like a crazy man. That wasn’t so hard. Next, I tried debating a topic with a teacher in class, I was terrified of speaking in front of others, fear messed with my brain, words jumbled together in strange sentences. I’d basically made a new language. My teacher clearly won the debate, but for me it was like losing the battle and winning the war. Then I asked some musicians whether they’d play in a band with me. They said yes. I couldn’t believe it. Was it really this easy?! That turned into another band and another. That one decision snowballed into countless opportunities, friends, recordings, tours… you get the picture.

I truly believe all of this led me to photography, but its bigger than that. I’ve kind of never stopped trying things that scare me and it’s really only occurred to me that my life began to change when I started that little experiment.

We all have our ‘thing’ that we are here to do, a calling or passion – if you want to know what that is you’ll have to make some choices that will seem kinda whack to others around you. People probably won’t understand because it’s not their thing, it’s yours. It’s going to be scary. It’s going to demand HUGE amounts of your time and sacrifice. Don’t freak out and runaway from it. Don’t shrink back from being you.

As lame as it sounds… If I can do this, you can do ‘this’.

Yours in radness,
SS