Dirty Rag Productions is a conglomeration of the work, ideas and experiences of my life. It aims to showcase what I have done, what I am doing, and what I am capable of doing for you.

I have lived a relatively short life soaked in interesting and diverse experiences. Since graduating university in 1997, I have travelled extensively, independently, in a bid to satisfy my unending curiosity with our beautiful planet and the fascinating people with whom we share it.

Along the way I have gathered a variety of skills and abilities that are not only facilitating the progressive evolution of my spirit and being but are also giving me a greater opportunity to live and make money doing more of what I love and less of what I loathe.

A philosophical and rather long-winded version of my personal profile and the way I view the world is located below. To see a quantitative analysis of my qualifications, skills, abilities, and experiences, click here.

I hope you enjoy my site. Have a great day!

- Brad

PERPETUAL eMOTION

A few days after my 21^st birthday, I boarded my first international flight at the Brisbane International Airport. I said goodbye to my Mum, Dad, and my two sisters, and proceeded down an escalator centrally positioned amidst a swathe of neon and fluorescent lights advertising colourful choices in food and leisure-type products. Shops. People wandered nearby, groups in parting, mixed emotion, complacently feeding from what was on offer. Sandwiches and burgers, sunglasses and perfumes, expensive toast with jam and handy compact this and digital that. Everything, in its radiant spick and span brilliance, was relatively and definitely normal.

As the escalator mechanically escorted me (ironically standing stationery) away from the family and the bright lights of abundant choice, I had no idea, really, that I was also bidding farewell to perception as I had previously known it. So long to normality, reality, and to the miniscule boundaries within which they are represented. Goodbye forever to life and the world I knew and enjoyed. I was embarking upon a journey that would change me, endlessly. I was becoming ‘a traveller’.

I flew over the beautiful Australian outback, above a featureless South-East Asian cloudy night sky and into Bangkok. From there it was on to Stockholm, and beyond. Working, living, travelling, vacationing, struggling, through eastern and western Europe, North and Central America, Africa, the Middle East, South Africa, South-East Asia, Eastern Australia, New Zealand…

In the years since that first departure, I have found myself forever coming and going. I’ve moved myself around the planet via car, motorbike, scooter, or nothing more than my own two feet and a pumping heart. I’ve taken taxis, ridden bicycles and tricycles, and sat rigid and squashed or comfortably strewn and content on airline recliner seats and vinyl bus benches. I call it perpetual emotion. Skirting the dimples of anthropomorphic delusion in a subconscious search of anything and everything. Travelling has accidently become me.

Somewhere along the way I realised I was addicted to photography. For a while, I found it difficult to go anywhere or do anything without carrying a camera. It is an addiction that stems from a fundamental curiosity in everything, coupled with a desire to share my experiences with those who may otherwise never have the privilege to be present in the same amazing space.

Over time I have come to love photography for it's ability to expose that which often goes unnoticed. Maintaining a photographic mindset is like scouring the world with a fine-tooth comb, searching for detail in colourless or seemingly mundane scenes. Photography is a drug that not only opens one's doors of perception but subconsciously forces you to find beauty or excitement in all things. It breeds a higher level of awareness of that which surrounds us, and compels one to look at the world differently.

I have returned numerous times to the town I grew up in and the airport I first left from. I have returned to the culture of home, the national and local community, and the customs bred therein. I have returned to friends and family and people whose greatest escape has been only television and the movies and magazines blaring the amazing details of him, her, them, those and these. I have returned to new legislature, building developments, deforestation, economic progression, and sloganized regimes advocating better this and cheaper that. I return to find everything the same, but different. Or is that different but the same?

Then begins the re-assimilation. It’s a swirling soup of emotion into which I dive head first, aloof and blissfully unaware of my poise to join the masses in gluttonous consumption. For a while I actually love and embrace it, but eventually there appears a growing hint of uncertainty approaching dissent. I want to remain detached from the capitalist culture and maintain a liberal and low-impact lifestyle, yet I must eat, have fun, and get prepared for the next trip. I must make money.

These contradicting feelings toy with my psyche playfully whilst I go sliding merrily into the slip stream of 'regular life'. I pursue my days with passion, dreaming of the past, recounting and utilising those vital lessons learnt in living the present as best I can. Then somehow an opportunity arises and I find myself packing a bag once more. Destination: Future.

Before I know it another chapter of my life comes then goes. I step into the space that encompasses the rest of the world, and become a sort of alien. I leave behind the familiar same-old only to rediscover it, eventually, disguised in different sights and sounds over and over again in another town, another country, another continent and another culture.

It’s hard for me not to be affected by what I see around me inside other cultures. Whether it's joy, pain, struggle, bliss, or melancholic nothingness, I become overwhelmingly interested. I am intrigued simply because I am observing something different. This propelled me further into photography. To capture these elements and share them with others in an interesting and provocative format is an immense challenge and thrill. The aim, more than to make money or fuel ego, is simply to inspire people to travel. Not to take brief holidays to comfortable resorts, but to travel. There's a whole world to discover, and in doing so one will inevitably discover more of themselves. It's like prying open your mind with an implement that leaves not only a scar but an infection that makes you want to see and do more. There are six and a half billion people out there, and the more you interact with, the more information you will gather and more opportunity you will attract. And your mind will open up. The wider the mind, the broader the level of tolerance and acceptance, and the deeper the level of understanding and compassion. Subsequently, the wallet may be much lighter, but I'd like to believe that real knowledge has far more potential than money.

Beneath our cultural differences, I've noticed so many common elements binding the human race; notions and concepts and ideas and forms ignorant of geographic confines, evolutionary precincts and religious beliefs. People are people, no matter what clothes they wear or language they speak. Everyone is seeking comfort and happiness, yet everyone seems to have problems. It's only what generates these feelings that varies. Happiness is like a fruit that grows from many different trees - it is not necessarily the biggest tree that produces the sweetest fruit.  And problems are like the grains of sand on the great deserts - they are numerous and will forever slow one's journey. The methods of managing these emotions varies from culture to culture, community to community and indeed from individual to individual. To experience this process from an internal yet detached perspective is a type of awakening into the nature of humanity.

Travelling moments become scars deeply embedded in your mind, to be remembered in future occasions back amongst 'normality'. They become lessons, drawn on time and time again. They become pillars of support in difficult situations and lead balloons when things seem too good to be true. These experiences become a powerful and invaluable tool which fine-tune the soul. Like water to a rich and diverse forest, they feed the mind, and it grows.

To travel is to explore; to explore is to discover. I hope to do both, endlessly.

- Brad

2007

Serenading the world's most relaxed dog, Otto, at Fattoria Bassetto, Tuscany, 2005 (Pic by Allie Keen)

A mellow day at Canggu, Bali in 2007, taken by my pal Josh with my gear after we did a board/camera swap