Early yesterday, bleary eyed I trudged down from my hotel to for another early flight. I happened to see an amazing butterfly, just chilling by the elevator.

Now all day I thought about the butterflies. What an odd creature, the metamorphosis of this stunning insect from a hairy little bugger into a beautiful colourful flying creature is something that bewilders me.
A caterpillar is not an elegant insect, infact when insects were made I can imagine the caterpillar’s reaction when he looked in the mirror. Its little hairy green face would full of disappointment, the poor thing would have been gutted to see all the cool insects.

From a masculinity perspective, the caterpillar looks at the other insects. It sees ants, with their enormous power to weight ratio; cockroaches, the armoured car of the insect world; and of course the spider. Come on, 8 legs, fangs and venom.

So… the caterpillar thinks… “hey maybe, I’m the effeminate critter of the insect world”.
I have no hesitation in saying that it would have been said with a lisp.
The caterpillar would then glance around at some feminine insects, like the ladybug, beautiful harmless little creature; the queen bee, the Julia Gillard of the bumble bees, although more of a yellow rather than an orange tinge; and of course the dragon fly, the geisha of insect air travellers.

So the caterpillar wanders off to be, well. A caterpillar, and to do… umm… look. its a caterpillar.
Then after what seems like a lifetime to our furry friend, it is at its wits end. Its life of listening to the Dido cd on repeat and watching romantic comedies alone on its little caterpillar dvd player in its little furry apartment was bordering on unbearable. Its life of mediocrity as an insect was eating at its existence.
Then, a commercial came on. It was for snuggies. As it was a bit cold, our caterpillar friend was pretty keen to know more so it kept watching. After whacking it on his Mastercard, the caterpillar eagerly watched its mailbox.

A few days later the package arrived, and it snuggled up in its snuggie, and wrapped himself up. Like a little cocoon. It dreamed of a life far from mediocrity, it knew it had more in its life than to be, not only an uncool insect, but scary, furry, with beady red eyes and most importantly not achieving its potential.
The little caterpillar’s thoughts were exhausting it. So it shut its eyes. When it awoke, it yawned. Stretched its legs. Rubbed its eyes. Farted. Then scratched its wings. Wait… its wings. Thats right it had transformed into a beautiful butterfly, the most beautiful of all insects. It could now fly around and make little kids smile and squeal. It would be a symbol of beauty. Hell if it was arrogant it could tease all the other insects and play ‘I’m too sexy” by Right Said Fred, on its little insect ipod.

I guess what I’m trying to get at is. You never see change. Time makes it happen before you know it.

The difference between our furry friend and us is, that the capacity to change the perception you have of yourself isn’t to dwell on physical obstacles, you can change your perception of yourself by changing how you act and going for what you want.

DISCLAIMER: Nic does not endorse purchasing a snuggie to make you look like Miranda Kerr or Johnny Depp. But it will keep you warm.

If nothing ever changed, there’d be no butterflies.

Don’t forget to check out the photoblog and portfolio… this is updated regularly also.

“We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.”

– Martin Luther King JR


Nothing is what it seems in the air… these are some shots I took this week in the Whitsundays whilst 500ft in the air, on an aerial photography contract


The clouds are comingggg

How islands are born

So I’m working in the Whitsundays and watched the Australia versus Ghana game surrounded by a mixture of tattooed locals, and British backpackers.

I came to realise how ‘football’ has idiosyncrasies that are common with my life and life in general.

Now i’m not a football fanatic, and let’s be honest, before Australia made the 06 World Cup it was called soccer, and it was played by wogs that couldn’t play AFL. Bandwagon anyone?

The juxtaposition of emotions are similar, when you are up, you rise to the highest of highs, and when you are down you can sink into the lowest of lows.

Both are a mixture of chance, skill, strength and also unfortunately can be heavily dependant on someone else’s decisions.

You can be loved or hated in a matter of seconds, and forgotten about in the blink of an eye.

But… the most interesting idiosyncrasy however between life and soccer is how everything can change in the blink of an eye. A red card, a goal in the last minute, an injury or a fumble and a goal…your world can change just like that.

You can look at this in a pessimistic way and dwell on the negatives, or you could view it in a positive way. When you are up ride it, and try and make the most of it, and when you are down just think, score that sneaky goal, or just play hard and something could happen that will change your life.

So, since my last update much has happened in my world. I said I’d enforce changes so I have….

Only one of which I’ll mention at this stage….

I am penning these thoughts perched in the penthouse of a resort in Airlie Beach.

On a whim I took a contract here with my lovely housemate David Higgs from Snapt Photography. Our task, to take and process hi resolution, geo-tagged images of power infrastructure, this is so the energy companies in Queensland can zoom in and check for damages.

BUT… we are taking these images from moving helicopters, whilst strapped to the outside, with a $28,000 camera.

This is a big change from the norm, of my stale white walled office, but I feel like i have a new lease on life.

I’ll continue to update images and my thoughts now I am settled into this new role… I’ll be based between Melbourne and Queensland…

A maybetmrw reader contacted me yesterday who enjoyed my writing and at the end of the correspondence told me…

Live in the moment – it’s the only guarantee.

I think that I’m beginning to do that.

Watch this space.

I won’t deny, I’m a complex person. Juggling my ‘party’ component, with business and personal life isn’t easy. It’s like playing hip hop, dance and rock all at once, whilst you like tracks from each genre, in the end it becomes a incoherent cacophony of sound. I am 25 and continually amaze myself at stupid decisions I make, and although I know I will learn from them, the casualties along the way aren’t something anyone could be happy with.
My small town upbringing often gets overwhelmed in the big city, and combined with my negative traits that are present in everyones underlying personality, the result can often be a noxious blend. Every time I notice it, or am faced with it, I am appalled.

But you have to remember. You can’t change the past, just change the future.

Laying in bed thinking at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon, has led me to a decision that if an attempt to change something fails, then only way that you can change what you don’t like within it is to change the environment in which it is surrounded by. Applying scientific principles to life, especially involving yourself is odd, but if you want something bad enough then you must try.

I am by no-means the devil, nor would my behaviour even register on the radar of most people, but essentially I know what type of person I grew up like, admire and want to be. Correction.. will be.

I think sometimes life throws out a wake up call. Whether that be giving you something amazing and taking it away, or opening your eyes to the big bad world out there. I guess the most important thing is, and the part that will define you is, to make it change you.
Not to ignore it, because the longer you do, the less obvious the wake up call’s will be, and the difficulty to change drastically increases.

Sorry to deepen your Saturday. But I needed to write that down, regardless if anyone reads it.

This is one of the stunts from The Killer Elite….

Latest big budget being filmed in Melbourne starring Jason Statham, Clive Owens & Robert De-Niro.

I just happened to be shooting photos at one of our venues in Flinders Lane today on the penthouse and low and behold, outside the window was a stunt being performed.

Note: My photos of Jason Statham are available for purchase through BarcroftPacific.com

I was recently at an event, and was speaking to an extremely cool guy, a successful businessman and one of very few people that you could tell, that was truly happy with his life. He told me of his days working flat out in a stressful job in Sydney CBD. He worked long hours, had no social life and was very stressed. Eventually he was at his wits end and quit his job, moved to the coast, near Coolangatta, started a family, and built up a property company. Now his days are filled with surfing, a few hours of work and looking after his kids.
He is now very well off, relaxed, and happy.

This made me think a lot. Previously I thought that to settle for moving to the seaside and not working in a CBD and progressing, meant a lack of ambition and drive. I was wrong. Ambition and drive doesn’t mean doing something you don’t like, living somewhere you don’t like, being someone you don’t like. Ambition and drive is desire for personal achievement; you can be successful and be the best at what you do where-ever you are. You can open a shop and still have that desire to make it the best shop you can. You can continually strive to improve, expand, earn more…. where ever you are.

This is a brilliant thought for me. It has motivated me to really be where I should be, doing what I should be doing. I will do anything i can to achieve my goal.

So my goal now is to be the ABSOLUTE BESTat laying at the beach and being fanned with giant leaves by gorgeous women in bikinis. I know i can do it. I believe in me.

Working in my industry, the weekends are very full on, so Sunday & Monday are often my weekend. The day following a weekend is not my friend, we aren’t on speaking terms and I certainly wouldn’t invite it to a family gathering. Bob Geldof’s “I don’t like Mondays” could perhaps be translated into Monday’s successor, but don’t fear it won’t have the same connotations attached to it as in the song.

Today however was made worse by being the first day of winter. To explain how much I dislike cold weather, I wore 2 t-shirts, a jumper and a trenchcoat today, and refused, even under fierce questioning, to remove any clothing even whilst sitting in my office.

Today was made worse by the fact that my business partner of 3 years, my partner in crime, my besty is off to Perth for 8 days, to warm weather. Leaving me in the cold, and with lots of work on my plate (the latter is completely fabricated but how’s my sob story going?). It’s more the jealousy that I’m not there!

Hell the day was so bad a giant sinkhole devoured a house in Guatemala, and Sarah Jessica Parker’s head is spread out throughout the media for SATC2 and her appearance as the Donkey in Shrek 4.

But alas. My day was great. I plowed through my work at a sprinters pace, Friday seems to be shaping up as an extremely busy night, I collected my brand new camera from Canon and many amazing things also happened today.

So… remember when everything is stacked against you, and everything seems gloom and doom..  fear not, the day is what you make of it.

…. oh man. It’s Wednesday tomorrow……