Marion Abada was drawn to photography in her mid-twenties during her travels around Europe and the Middle East. After taking thousands of pictures with a little film camera, she says that she was hooked. Abada says that she has always loved the creative path, although her path to photography has been a circuitous one. For the past 20 years, she has worked in professional services, consulting on strategy and operations to Australia’s leading businesses.
In 2010, Abada started studying photography part-time at Photography Studies College in Melbourne, completing her studies with a major in commercial photography. Drawn to architectural photography, her approach is shares similarities with portrait photographers. “I see buildings and architecture like a portrait photographer sees people - all different, all with their own personalities,” she says. “It’s a balancing act of trying to convey the architect’s intention, while also trying to figure out what the space is saying, and find a different perspective.”
Personal work is incredibly important to Abada, and each year she takes a month off to travel with her family, often returning with two to three projects to work on. “Sometimes I go with an idea for a potential project and do a lot of research beforehand, while other times an idea just hits me and I become incredibly disciplined around capturing that theme throughout our travels.” With this work, she says that she’s attracted to the idea that photography is a starting point for creative expression. “Like painting or drawing, I see photography as a creative medium that allows me to interpret the world through a different lens that starts with planning the ‘in camera image’ through to post-production digital manipulation.”
No stranger to awards, in 2014 Abada was named Australian Student Photographer of the Year for Documentary Photography (ACMP SPY Awards) and Victorian Student Photographer of the Year (EPSON AIPP Victorian Professional Photography Awards). In 2015, she was a finalist in Capture magazine’s Top Emerging Photographers in the Architecture category.
www.marionabada.com.au
