One of my favourite Canberra performers to photograph is Alison McGregor, she is a talented artist in a number of areas.

The first time I photographed Alison was at the Canberra Fringe Festival in 2008, which also happened to be the first time I attempted performance photography.

The next time I saw Alison was in Min Mae's Tableaux series.

I had seen Butoh being performed at the Fringe Festival and thought it would work well in a studio photo shoot. I knew Alison had trained in Butoh performance and asked if she was interested in improvising a performance in a studio space while I photographed, thankfully she was. One of the more interesting aspects of photographing Alison is the facial expressions she makes when performing, that is particularly the case in butoh.

In 2010 I wanted to try underwater photography and Alison volunteered to be one of the models. It was an interesting experience, and I learnt a lot from that particular shoot which came in very handy on my Mission Beach trip.

In 2010 I was able to photograph the musical "What are you" by Braiden Dunn and Lucy Matthews at DNA Studios, Gorman House Arts Centre.

I first saw Sparkles in 2011 at the Red Herring cafe, she has since become a regular at Canberra burlesque performances, the photos below come from Comic Strip (2012), Canberra Fringe Festival 2014, Burlesque Idol 2014 and shows produced by the Sass and Tease Collective. Sparkles is a very visceral character, who always gets a good reaction from the audience.

in October last year Alison was one of the models in the Canberra 100's Spin Wear burlesque fashion parade with costumes made from car parts. The designer of her outfit is Alison Bogg.

When I decided to start my photography business I needed to have some photos for advertising purposes, while I had plenty of photos for the art style photo sessions, I didn't have many that fit what I had in mind for private portraiture. Alison was my first choice to model for them.

Virginia Fizz is another of Alison's burlesque alter egos, who is very different from Sparkles, if I had to describe the difference I would say that Virginia is much more refined, I haven't seen much of her so far, but look forward to seeing more of Virginia's acts in the future