The McPherson Ranges, QLD, headwaters for the Clarence River NSW,
All imagery on KOB Designs is copywrite to KMO’Brien. Please contact us to use these images.
I live on the beautiful Far North Coast of NSW, Australia, I moved here from Sydney when I was 28 years old with 3 small children. I had a multitude of ideals, dreams and hopes but I soon discovered that the reality of country life was not like my fantasy world I had created.
My working background before children had offered me some fantastic experiences and I was privilaged to work as an administrator within some major corporations at a time when gaining employment was a much simpler process than it is today.
I have always enjoyed photography however I never understood exactly what one can actually do with a camera, for me, photos were about good times shared with friends and containing the memories to share again some time, as I progressed to having my children it was almost like record keeping and the photo albums grew.
Over the years of my teens I developed my own artistic sense, I spent long hours drawing and later playing with words when I enrolled in a visual merchandising and display course with my local technical college. School art classes were a non event as they were competitive and seemed to be associated with cool kids with older siblings who had already done well in the course, my temperament and disgust at particular features of organisation and distinctions of these classes, left me less than excited at what I was offered as an individual student. I fought with my art teacher and spent time outside in the hallway due to my behaviour or my opposition to her traditional artistic beliefs.
Over the years I continued with my drawing and wordplay, and I found great comfort in working in my gardens in four different social housing homes I was priviliged to live in, I designed and landscaped each garden and took great pride in my work. It was in 1996 that I began to do a ceramics course with TAFE in Grafton and this was where I discovered there was a great deal more to art than I was ever exposed to I learnt about design, colour, perspective and how to manipulate substance and change chemical structure, these were enjoyable productive years.
In 2002, I changed my studies to natural resource management and gained my diploma in my field, while working with the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service again however art came into play, this time photography began to be used as evidence of land evalutions, it had a purpose. I also created a series of drawings for part of an assessment for animal taxonomy which was far beyond the scope of the initial purpose of the course but a most enjoyable exercise considering my background. In 2003 I gave birth once again at 36 years old within a new relationship which found me studying a diploma, and moving across state to WA with 3 kids, a baby and a dog to support my new partners career choice. It was here that I was offered the chance to see and photograph one of the worlds biodiversity hotspots for the Dept of Environment and Conservation while working as a terrestrial ecologist, I also worked for the National Landcare program and had the oportunity to teach ceramics at TAFE.
Skip forward a few years and I moved back to NSW where I was again privilaged to reside in the beautiful Dorrigo Plateau on the Great Dividing Range to right now where I am in the process of learning new skills and enhancing and upgrading older ones in the awesome and inspiring Clarence Valley.
I am very interested in New Media and technology, and I am studying administration programming and accounting but my true purpose in life lies in the ecological processes defined and undefined, and human evolutionary impact caused by industrialisation and disorganised urbanisation and regionalisation on the human psych.
On my days off and during holiday periods I get out to the awesome and inspiring National Park treasures that Australia has to offer to photograph and describe each experience with fresh eyes and the knowing that each day is a new day, each moment is the only moment and that the present is a gift worth receiving and of course sharing.
IT Tools For New Media 