Atkins Labcast Episode 39 - Kym from Refocus Retreat

May 30

In the first interview recorded in a year or more, Paul talks with Kym Vulling from the Refocus Retreat.

Refocus Retreat was first run in 2014, it is a female focussed conference that has survived the ons and offs of COVID and the challenges that our representative industry bodies have been through.

Paul attended the event in April 2022 and had a blast, and he cannot recommend it enough. With speakers presenting their work, discussing business, and sharing techniques, and a small trade show (where Atkins will have a table!) it is a feast of information on photography. This year it is being run concurrently with the Ballarat International Photo Bienale, a month long festival, both of which, should not be missed.

Kym has a discount code for listeners who book in the next week, it is ATKINS23. So get in there and book now.

Kym also discusses her amazing personal work. Kym works with the sex positive community and embraces and celebrates this important slice of the human condition. You can find out more at https://wilderminds.com.au

Enjoy this fresh episode!

Refocus Retreat
https://refocusretreat.com.au

Transcript

Paul Atkins

00:14
Listeners, welcome to the Atkins Labcast. In this episode, I interview Kym from Refocus Retreat. What is Refocus Retreat, I hear you ask? Well, it's a female-focused conference being held in Ballarat at the front end of the Ballarat International Photo Biennale. Kym's conference, there will be speakers, interactive sessions, inspiration sessions, business sessions. There'll be photographers talking about this, that and the other. So there's a lot to learn, a lot of camaraderie, a really lovely feel. It's probably one of the most exciting, warm conferences that I've ever been to. I went along last year. You'll hear about it more in our interview. So you might ask, what is the Ballarat International Photo Biennale? Well, I think it's the most important photographic festival in the Southern Hemisphere, probably in the world, just because... It's close to us. It's held in Ballarat every year or every second year. Of course, this is our second. We're on the beat this year for the second year. And the whole town has turned over to exhibitions and events all around photography. It really is fabulous. So if you're going to book, well, two things you've got to remember. Give yourself plenty of time to get around the Biennale and see everything. But secondly, when you go... you make sure you book yourself a ticket to see, well, to attend Kym's event. And she's given us a discount code, and it's ATKINS23. That's capitals, all capitals, A-T-K-I-N-S, and the number 23. No spaces in that. And if you enter that, that'll give you some discount at the time of booking. So what else is in this interview? Kym talks about her personal work, which is awesome. Really, really fascinating. In fact, I heard her speak last year and it stopped the show. So you're in for a treat, listeners. Sit back and enjoy. I've done an intro and I just have no idea how to do an intro.

Kym Vulling

02:26

Right? Well, yeah. Do you know how to do an intro?

Paul Atkins

02:28

No, I don't know how to do an intro. Well, I'm Paul and you are?

Kym Vulling

02:33

Kym. Kym Vulling.

Paul Atkins

02:35

Kym Vulling.

Kym Vulling

Yeah.

Paul Atkins

02:37

Thank you so much for joining us, Kym. This is the first episode we've recorded for a long time. It won't be the first episode out. Yeah. But it's been a long time between drinks. And actually, it's been a long time since you and I have caught up.

Kym Vulling

Yeah,

Paul Atkins

almost.

Kym Vulling

02:52

Well, not 18 months yet, but it's been over a year.

Paul Atkins

02:55

Yeah, over a year, which is insane. So we'll get into who you are and what you do, but let's just talk about where we last spent time together. It was an event you were running called the Refocus Retreat.

Kym Vulling

Yep.

Paul Atkins 03:10

And when was it? What was the, because I think it was last year, but it wasn't, was it?

Kym Vulling 03:15

No, it was last year in March.

Paul Atkins 03:17

Okay.

Kym Vulling 03:18

Yeah, so it's now over a year ago, but the next one's being held in August.

Paul Atkins 03:23

Yeah. And so for us, for me, it was the first thing that I'd done, you know, sort of publicly. And I don't want to mention the P word, the pandemic word, but it was the first thing I did. And it was so nerve wracking going along to something. But I was desperate to go because I love being around people. And I think everybody who turned up at your event were desperate to be there and do something different. So do you want to tell us what the retreat is and tell us a little about the history of it? Because we're kind of talking about that. today and we're also talking about you and your personal work.

Kym Vulling 03:56

Yeah, look, the retreat probably started as an idea in 2014. A bunch of photographer mums or women who were photographers had gotten together and wanted to get away for a weekend and just be around other people who loved photography, just enjoy each other's company and just you know, get out and shoot some things. And by the time we actually ran it in 2015, about 30 women went away and a few people volunteered to run some workshops and some talks. And it was very grassroots, but there was something in it. There was a confidence and it was a little bit more freeing for a lot of the women that went. They sort of hadn't sort of felt really comfortable to ask the stupid questions or really develop their businesses in any way. And it was sort of then that I guess we realised the group that sort of started it, but that there was a real isolation in running a business on your own. And sometimes ...

Paul Atkins 05:06

Oh, totally.

Kym Vulling 05:07

I think especially for a lot of the female photographers we knew, often had kids underfoot, working from home, trying to juggle several different things and sometimes didn't really feel like they had many people they could talk to about their business. So yeah, we kind of, I kind of, sort of took it on and developed it as a business and it's grown sort of exponentially from there and we now have around 100 women getting away for four days and three nights every year. We have a trade show, we have over 30 workshops available to choose from and keynotes and it's just for women in photography or female identifying.

Paul Atkins 05:52

So let's go, let's wind back the clock because I'm trying to work out the timeline of 2014. Now, I remember at the time, because I was heavily involved with the AIPB and, you know, definitely my heart was wrapped around the idea of it. And I remember this, oh, another workshop sprung up. Now, was it the case that, AIPP is still thrumming along at that stage, running the event. And so this was something else. So my feeling of like, oh, my God, there's another workshop. Because what you've become is you've filled a massive void since the AIPP imploded, you know, in my world and in my, you know, that desire to wrap my heart around something which is a really good idea to get people together. Because also I remember at the time there being this, Real judgment around women in photography and mums with a camera. You said it, M-Wax. There

Kym Vulling 06:48

was. It was kind of a rebellion against that for us in some ways because it was hurtful, I guess, for a lot of women in the industry at that period of time. I don't think it's as hurtful now. It

Paul Atkins 06:60

was disgusting, the attitude. And I remember some senior industry members coming down on top of– you know, metaphorically, you know, complaining about it publicly that they're ruining the industry. And it was like, what the hell? These are photographers running a great little business like what's the story here like and then there was the whole judgment of like you're running a retreat just for women or female identifying people like like why can't we come along I should ask you how come I was allowed to come along

Kym Vulling 07:33

you're a sponsor so

Paul Atkins 07:36

that's different I don't know it was it felt weird going along to an event uh last year when I was like one of five or six of us or whatever, and 90 women. It was the strangest thing I'd ever experienced.

Kym Vulling 07:49

Oh, we were all very nice to you. You were. It was incredible. I think for us it's more about the safety of the space. There's a lot of people that I, I mean, I had a lot of people, different comments just throughout the time that we've had the retreat. I'm fairly confident and confident perhaps didn't have these feelings as much myself, but certainly had many women speak to me saying, this is great because I actually got to speak to say someone around technical and lighting and just ask questions and not feel like I was going to be looked down on or talk to like I was silly. A lot of women will walk into a store, whether it's IT or anything technical. And we basically, a lot of the time we'll feel like we're being talked to without, they assume that, you know, our husband or someone like that is going to buy it. There's that mentality. It's a very strange mentality. It's always sort of been there. It's not really, I do feel it has changed a lot since we've started, from the time we started writing The Retreat to now. But there is definitely...

Paul Atkins 08:59

Well, within the industry you feel it's changed. Yeah, within the industry a

Kym Vulling 09:01

bit. I think, I hope that we've helped with that. But I think the big trade shows, the really big photography trade shows and that, a lot of women didn't, Or if they did, they wandered around, picked up things in show bags, didn't want to talk to anyone because it just felt intimidating for them. A lot of women, they were fine. But, you know, I'm just speaking for some. And I didn't realise that the retreat became a place where it was really comfortable and relaxed and they could really investigate new genres and not feel like they were asking a silly question or... connecting, they were able to connect with people in a really relaxed way. We try to create a really non-judgmental space because we've got anywhere from real beginners and amateurs or people that are just starting out all the way through to really experienced photographers. And the biggest thing we keep trying to create is this safe space where everyone is encouraged to ask questions and be a little bit vulnerable about their business and really kind of rethink how they run their business or arts practice moving forward. And the best way to do that is for everyone to feel safe and comfortable in that environment. And so it's very inclusive. And I think we designed it really specifically to be that way. I just didn't realise, I think, until we did run it, how much that sort of space was needed. Yeah.

Paul Atkins 10:24

Yeah, I know. I felt the same. You know, I wasn't like, what's my perspective on this? But at first I thought, you know, this is strange. You know, like this is, and I remember hearing the grumbling and I wasn't sure. And, you know, also I felt as an AIPP person that it was like another competing event. So I had this sort of a whole thing going. But, you know, the little events really, really made sense. the industry these little focus like kelly brown's you know baby workshops yeah baby summit that's the word um yeah and then you know richard white's large format

Kym Vulling 10:24

yeah

Paul Atkins 11:06

black and white in in at bright you know uh yeah all of these strange little things are really what gave so much color to it the um uh hair of the dog uh you know

Kym Vulling 11:18

yeah oh i forgot about him And then now you have these, you have these larger events too, that have kind of started as well that never used to be around like photo 20. Is it called photo 2023? Um, and, or, Is that coming back in 24? I can't remember. It's biannual.

Paul Atkins 11:35

Yeah, and the Ballarat Biennale. Ballarat

Kym Vulling 11:36

Biennale, which we've been lucky enough. That's the other thing is we've been lucky enough to sort of have them as event partners this year. So we're partnering alongside them. We're running a retreat during their or as part of their opening weekend. So that kind of it's a really nice time for us.

Paul Atkins 11:53

It is an incredibly like you guys were well tied in. any rate with contemporary art and photography as art, the way I felt that at the last event and just trying to think of the

Kym Vulling 12:06

commitment. We're trying to move a little bit more to a mix of both business and commercial type photography, lifestyle photography to also involving and making sure that we're looking after the photographic artist as well and what the arts practice is and what it means to be an artist because I mean, that's what nourishes our soul is that creative edge, I think.

Paul Atkins 12:29

That's why you got into it in the first place. Of

Kym Vulling 12:31

course, yeah.

Paul Atkins 12:32

I mean, I remember speaking, you know, even photographers all around Australia, Hilary Wardoff, like they come out of their school with like excitement to take pictures and that and then you can get into the business of photography and lose all of that. And because you're just trying to, I think you said it on the preview, we're trying to wring a living out of it. And rather than just let it happen and enjoy the art for the art's sake. So it's really smart that you're doing it because I felt photographic artists have been really underrepresented over the years.

Kym Vulling 13:05

Yeah, look, we probably started out thinking, you know, we had certain criteria for our speakers as far as writing a business and things like that. But we're moving more and more to having a mix so that you've got some really professional photographers who know what they're doing and they know how to run a business and they know how to make money from photography. you know, educating and running workshops. But we also have the artist that's doing exhibitions and, you know, in the head-on festival or being shown in galleries around Australia. And we want to, you know, they don't necessarily always are considered a business model. So in order to serve those clients, artists and photographers we need to have a range of things to on offer same with a range of genres so we sort of try to make everyone happy but it's not always the case but like we try to sort of cover up a lot of different genres and workshops.

Paul Atkins 13:58

Yeah I didn't feel like so we're going back to last year just thinking about there's a few standouts for me that and I think there's the reason why I found the event so endearing like firstly that I was actually allowed to come along, which was very cool. A special

Kym Vulling 14:12

place for you.

Paul Atkins 14:14

I know. I was super honoured. It was great. But, you know, there's a couple of standouts. Like Rowena Meadows, I just can't shake her work from my mind. And her presentation and her lack of self-confidence, I think it's actually there, but I think it's a tool she uses.

Kym Vulling 14:35

What is it? It's like a lack of... Well, she's actually just quite modest, I think.

Paul Atkins 14:42

It just happens, but her work just happens. Like

Kym Vulling

she,

Paul Atkins 14:46

it just, I don't know, she brings it out in people, her subjects.

Kym Vulling 14:50

I think any time you create artwork that evokes an emotion in the audience, which her work certainly does in a lot of different ways, I think sometimes when you're speaking about that work, it can be a little emotional for yourself sometimes. So I sometimes thought that some of her talk was just actually that little bit of emotion of I know I'm having an impact on the audience as I'm speaking to them and that little bit of self-consciousness or I know I felt it. So, you know, I think...

Paul Atkins 15:20

I was moved by it.

Kym Vulling 15:22

Yeah, definitely moving work. Her... Her raw portrayal of families and the day in the life of style documentary, you know, that sort of documentary style photography was just an incredible thing to sort of see her story and to witness

Paul Atkins 15:41

her work. And celebrating the chaos and the sort of the anti-Instagram, everything's perfect. And we all have, that's life. And she's proudly saying, no, no, just forget all the other stuff. Let's put that up the front, the chaos.

Kym Vulling 15:55

Yeah, what I love about that style of photography too is it's almost a rebellion against the old school, you know, photography of everyone sits at the mall in front of the camera and everyone has to smile all the time. You know, it's actually real life. It's documenting real experiences and real things as they happen. I find it really interesting. Yeah.

Paul Atkins 16:20

It was technically exquisite, wasn't it? Yeah, it was. It's exquisite, her work. The lighting is stunning. She follows the light all the time. Anyway, that stood out. The second thing that stood out to me, like there was more than three, but I really, oh, God, the name is going to slip me now, but the sheer level of organisation of your, the speaker who spoke about commercial photography. who was the shop building. Sorry?

Kym Vulling 16:54

Do you mean Janice or the food photographer?

Paul Atkins 16:58

No, no, no. She spoke about buildings and construction.

Kym Vulling

Oh!

Paul Atkins 17:05

This is so embarrassing. So embarrassing. I feel awful. I follow her on Instagram and I'm always...

Kym Vulling 17:15

Same. I've just done the same thing. She does all the construction photography.

Paul Atkins 17:19

Yeah, yeah. No, what I loved about her work... To cut this bit. I'm so embarrassed. We're the worst people on earth. I'm actually looking at Instagram now going, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick. Don't have a mental bank. I haven't recorded a podcast for hours, for years. You just put me on the

Kym Vulling 17:35

spot. No,

Paul Atkins 17:37

it's not your fault. It's my fault. Sarah Louise.

Kym Vulling 17:39

Yes. I'm so sorry. No,

Paul Atkins 17:43

it's not your fault. It's my fault. But look, what I loved about her work is the level of organization she had and the way she structured her life. And it's a business and she has a very good living, a very consistent income from it. She's picked a market that will deliver what she wants. She gets to work in interesting ways. You know, she's brilliant. So I

Kym Vulling 18:08

love that. In an industry that doesn't have a lot of women working within it too, so it was quite inspiring in that regard. And she... She gets to go out on all these construction sites and architectural sites and just that's what she does. And she creates these beautiful images and commercial images of these.

Paul Atkins 18:28

Yeah, yeah. And they're technically exquisite like Rowena's are. But the business stuff is what I went. I took a ton of notes. I was like, oh, my God. And I've seen everyone speak the last, you know, 30 years. And she just drew me through this whole. So Sarah Jackson, yeah. That was a killer. Gee Greenslade, who was our sponsor. Oh, she was a cracker. Absolutely. Like that was performance, wasn't it? Yeah, it was. That was performance art. And I don't know. I know the audience gave like a mixed response, but everybody, everyone was moved in one way or another. She was talking about failure and letting failure happen.

Kym Vulling 19:12

Yeah, and be okay with that failure. I think in that, especially in the lead up to COVID and the pandemic, there was that real hustle. You had to be hustling all the time. You always had to be. Hustle culture is disgusting. Hustle culture, right? And now we've all gone, just stop with the hustle. But part of that is about this whole thing of you have to always be succeeding and you have to hide the failure. And just the way she spoke about, the different things that impact you in your life. And she talked about mental health and she talked about failing and it's embracing that, that those rock bottoms at the times that they happen, because they're always a growth, you know, they're always something new and that tearing things down to start something fresh sort of was really refreshing point of view, but also wonderfully dramatic um talk and i don't think i've seen anything quite like it she's amazing

Paul Atkins 20:07

no she always she does bring down the house um

Kym Vulling 20:10

yeah i was

Paul Atkins 20:13

i was moved by her too like i i had a really weepy event it was i think it was that whole everyone was we'd been away from being at events like this and there was all these people just showing bearing their soul and seeing their work and I think and my fourth thing which actually stands out first but I left it to last was your work and your speech which I know you're on I could see how much of a limb you went out on to talk about it I felt, I felt my heart went out to you going up there but also I was... I was so excited to see it.

Kym Vulling

Yeahh

Paul Atkins 20:57

I was so curious and I think the whole, everyone's like whispering, *whispering* What's Kym doing? What's she going to do? What's she going to do?

Because everyone wants to see, everyone wants to see some kink and they want to see it. No, they want to understand it, get their head around it. Because, you know, at one side of it, it's going, you know, up and down the back of your head, you know, you can feel there's something about this we should understand. And yet, you know, sometimes your judgment kicks in, you go, you know, oh, I wouldn't do that. And then sometimes like, yeah, but I'm away from everybody. And, you know, we're at this place and, The person who runs the event is talking about it, so it's got to be okay. So can you talk about your personal work?

Kym Vulling 21:35

Yeah, I can. So post... I ran a wedding photography business for 15 or, you know, 15-plus years, and that was my main income. That was what I did for a very long time. I was still doing that when I was starting the retreat. And... I started, strangely, fortunately, maybe I was in the middle of a process of closing that down or winding that down at the end of 2019 with the idea I might start something more commercial. Was

Paul Atkins 22:08

that a painful thing to make that call?

Kym Vulling 22:11

Yeah, look, it was mainly, I think I wanted to make that call a couple of years prior. I was still... very well you know booked out but i wasn't in love with shooting weddings the way i had been in the past and i could feel that that passion was shifting um and i think you have to sometimes listen to that even if people around you because everyone around me said why would you do that you make good money in your business how could you ever give up weddings you're good at it this is what you're good at um but i think you can be good at lots of things in your life And I think you can change and I think you can have many different career paths. And I think the era of just doing one thing for the whole of your life, just doing one thing for the whole of your life is less and less relevant.

Paul Atkins 23:05

Like you're hanging on, aren't you? You're hanging on to a promise. You feel like you made a promise that I'm going to be this person

Kym Vulling

Paul Atkins 23:13

the world. You know, you've told the world I'm this person, I'm doing. And you feel like you're letting all of that down, which is, crazy because no one's holding you to it. No. And

Kym Vulling 23:22

I thought, well, I'll just shift the type of photography I'm going into. And part of that shift was also starting to do creative work for myself again. So I joined the IAPP actually in 2014, 15, around the time the retreat started as well. Oh, yeah. And... I hadn't had much success in the competitions with my wedding work. I wasn't very good at making a decision to, I don't know, do creative work for myself whilst working for a client. I seemed to not be able to think of it while I was shooting and so I was often just looking for stuff that I'd shot for the client and wasn't really my own creative take on how I would shoot Anyway, I got a couple of silvers here and there and that was about it.

Paul Atkins 24:09

Well, that's better than I did.

Kym Vulling 24:11

And then I decided to do an artistic series. So I knew a lot of people in the alternative lifestyles community or they call it sexpos community now. And I knew a lot of people who had a lot of different unusual experiences I suppose you call them kinks or lifestyles. And I kind of wanted to, I didn't like the fact that I guess for them it was the colour and the interest in their life. But for a lot of other people they would see that as being sort of some sort of dark grey area or some sort of that those people were disturbed in some way or something like that, which isn't the case. Yeah. And it's actually a really old psychology thing from Freudian times, right? It's just not the case and it's been disproven and, you know, that there's any necessarily has to be a trauma thing or anything like that involved in these things, right? It's simply that some people have different interests. And I think I wanted to sort of show that there were, I wanted to show it in a light, pop-arty, fun way. So I started interviewing some of the alternative people lifestyles or people that I knew in that community and um I would as I spoke to them I would see a picture in my head of what I wanted to create so I started creating these artworks and I was sort of just doing it for myself and for for fun and to just get creative again and not be doing weddings.

Paul Atkins25:43

I like this, keep coming back to not doing weddings. Not doing

Kym Vulling 25:46

weddings for a bit. Just trying to revitalise my own creativity.

Kym Vulling 25:50

It's so hard as a wedding

Kym Vulling 25:52

photographer. Someone convinced me to put two of them in the awards and I won a gold for each of them. Within minutes of each other, being judged in two rooms next to each other and both of them were being talked up to gold. And I fell on the ground crying because I hadn't, it was some sort of weird validation for me. But I just, someone sort of, I had a few people sort of say, you've got to keep, this is what you're passionate about. You've got to keep doing artwork like this. You need to do stuff like this. And I haven't had, I have, so that's sort of what I pursued. I was doing quite a bit of that work. leading into the pandemic. And one of the big shoots that I did in sort of in between lockdowns and during restrictions when I could drive around was a peep show project, which is a lot of people in the sex positive community just posing in windows or nudes in windows, things like that. So it was kind of, some of them were a bit more risque than others. But it's a project that I'm still pulling together into, hopefully into a book coming

Paul Atkins 26:58

your way. It'll look excellent. Like I pre-ordered a copy this afternoon because I was going, I was looking through your website, trying to refresh my mind about some of this stuff. I went, oo

Kym Vulling

Yeah *laughs*

Paul Atkins 27:08

the book. Because I remember you talking about it and I love the series. I thought it was fantastic. these little sort of vignettes of people framed by their windows or,

Kym Vulling

Yeah

Paul Atkins

you know.

Kym Vulling 27:21

Yeah, and some of them, like I did enter a couple into awards just to see if they're, riskiness would be accepted and in some I was asked told to that I couldn't enter because of the type of nudity that was there and other ones you know I made it into the finalists or into the runners-up and things like that so it was it was quite an interesting experimentation of what's considered you know the same as Instagram and things like that where there's so much What do you call that? Censorship. That's it. Censorship. There really

Paul Atkins

28:05

is. Sort of

Kym Vulling 28:06

to see where censorship sat and how it was definitely more the arts-based competitions that were more comfortable with nudity and the more commercial or photography societies that were actually more conservative. And it was really quite interesting to sort of see that shift that difference and it was it was kind of just nice for me to test people's people's boundaries

Paul Atkins 28:34

oh that's that's what you felt in the room when you were doing the presentation of course what you also did is you had two shibari artists with you didn't you yeah and that was like there's gonna be a performance of now just tell us what shibari is

Kym Vulling 28:47

so shibari is right oh i hope i say this i hope i'm doing this justice as well and um because I have great respect for the people within that community. But shibari is a form of Japanese, it's a form of tying rope around bodies. It's an art form that has been around for centuries and sort of come from, it's probably come from more, a different background, you know, that it was used to restrain prisoners and things like that, but it became more and more decorative. There's a lot of Japanese albums.

Paul Atkins

Yeah.

Kym Vulling 29:24

And it's become quite a beautiful process of... it's almost like a dance between the person who's doing the tie and a person who's being tied. And so you will now find that, especially in Melbourne, there's a lot of shibari performances now in normal clubs and bars where anyone can go see them. They're often not nudity or anything rude going on. They're just a beautiful performance of this quite an intimate performance and sensual performance of rope between two people. And it's... I really love the art form. Some people might even know, like there was an art exhibition at the NGV of where they tied footballers up into the roof of the NGV where the stained glass windows and all that sort of stuff, and that was part of one of the big art festivals in Melbourne, Rising, I think it was. So to see that some of these art forms that people thought were sort of darker or kinky or, you know, like should be kept, you know, hidden is now coming out as an art form in sort of more of the larger art festivals, which I think is really interesting. Obviously there's a change in perspective in what we consider or our conservative, you know, viewpoint on these things. And that's what I like to challenge. I think... We sometimes get outside our own heads with rules and all that sort of stuff. And I think sometimes you just need to sort of relax a little bit and kind of open your eyes to different things and that people like different things.

Paul Atkins 31:06

Yeah. I don't know if I said any of

Kym Vulling 31:08

that right.

Paul Atkins 31:09

Yeah, no, no, I get it. Because you know what I felt leading up? This is, you know, it sounds very euphemistic, but you presented right at the end and there really was this sort of, titillating build-up where people were going, what's Kym going to do? I've heard about this. And actually, because I was hanging around out the front and not in every talk, I had the performers sitting there and I was just yakking with them. I had no idea who they were and what they're going to do. And it was like this build-up. And then when it actually, when you presented, it was like this sort of release of like, oh, It's all good, and this is fun, and these people are lovely, and everyone's having a good time, and yet it's kind of like a bit of a turn-on as well. It's kind of exciting. It's sensual. It's gentle,

Kym Vulling

but

Paul Atkins

it's

Kym Vulling

sensual.

Paul Atkins 32:00

Yeah, yeah. You're going to really felt something with it.

Kym Vulling

Yeah.

Paul Atkins 32:04

that's what i that's really what came away from the retreat for me was all of those feelings um that i got now like you know i'm probably the right age to be getting all the mid middle-aged you know whatever it is midlife crisis getting all these feelings coming anyway um but also you know we hadn't had i don't know you just presented it all so beautifully and you had the right kind of speakers you know how to do it so Congratulations, anyway. Thank you.

Kym Vulling 32:31

Well, I don't normally present myself, just so everyone knows. No, I know. That was Nikon. Julie from Nikon insisted that I talk about my story when normally I'm in the background. So I'll probably be back in the background this year. But still, I think, look, I think I've always, I guess, been passionate about being inclusive and that includes different communities individually. not just the sex positive community, but all communities, the queer community, all that sort of stuff. I think there is this element of I prefer to try and break down as many of those sort of barriers as I can, if I can, both with the event and with my work. Yeah. I like to challenge those ideologies where people get quite conservative about things. But the event itself has a mix of everything. So it's actually really safe for people of all different. We're not going to do any, you know, make you watch anything you don't want to watch and we're not going to make you see anything you're going to see. That was just my talk.

Paul Atkins 33:40

No, no, I understand. That mixture was that fear. Like Sarah Louise's work for me and her presentation was And it was so, it was like nuts and bolts. It was like, oh, and then she's so good on social media and that. So I kind of felt like, okay, so she's organized and scheduled and this is how she does her billing. And so I got that. And I think it's good to get that as a part of any mix of things that happened.

Kym Vulling

yeah

Paul Atkins 34:06

I don't know, it was just so refreshing seeing, also seeing her in a very male dominated area.

Kym Vulling

Yeah.

Paul Atkins 34:12

Absolutely kicking goals. So yeah, the whole thing was good mix. This sort of reflects back on, your professional skill of being like an event organizer um is that is that that's where the industry you're working in now sort of thing because you're not a wedding photographer and you're not just living on the retreats massive profits are

Kym Vulling 34:33

you the tree is a love job but that's just um but the thing i think What happened when I ran the retreat and it was part of the closing down the wedding business and rethinking what I wanted to do next, my art is something I can do now for me and if I do an exhibition, I do an exhibition. If I don't, I don't. It's just something I love to do. And it's been lovely to rediscover that love of photography again in that way. But what happened for me for the retreat was that I realised I love creating things these beautiful spaces for people and creating events that people walk away from just feeling on top of the, you know, on cloud nine and, you know, don't want to go home kind of energy. That's the sort of when I realised that I had an ability to help create those sort of spaces, I got quite passionate about wanting to do more of it. So I studied a Masters of Arts Management during college the lockdowns, had to do something. Other

Paul Atkins 35:37

than poking a camera through people's windows, you know,

Kym Vulling 35:40

consensually. Consensually, consensually or consensually. But basically, yeah, I now work in events and festivals in a full-time capacity and I'm always looking for new opportunities to kind of what's the next thing I'm going to be doing, what's the next sort of thing I can create, what's the next event or next event, sorry, art project or programming that I can curate. That's sort of definitely where... my passion is now um and where I think it will continue to be um photography I had in order for me to fall back in love with it uh after feeling I guess I mean I guess it was probably a little bit feeling a bit burnt out you know after years of working for yourself um

Paul Atkins 36:25

nearly 20 years is nearly yeah on weddings weddings are like fashion with amateurs it's it's that they really like anyone who who works in weddings and they need a medal, really. Yeah, it's definitely a burnout

Kym Vulling 36:39

industry, even with caterers, everything. Like I know a lot of people that were doing weddings with me as other suppliers that are definitely not doing it now, you know, in catering or musicians or whatever. So I think there's a state. I think weddings can be– some people– They do deserve a medal, but some people do it for their whole life. I'm not sure. For me it was I had a time and place for that. But I think you've got time and, you know, I think there's time to have more than one passion, more than one career if you want to. And for me that was definitely the case. I'm always, I think, looking for it. more interesting things to kind of throw myself at and see if I can make them better or create something new.

Paul Atkins 37:29

That's a brave thing to go forward. I mean, I'm speaking from someone who never hasn't really changed anything in his life, which, you know, I'm super lucky because everything's really cool. But you do look around and go, oh, what am I doing right now? And you've just gone, well, yeah, I've had enough of that. I did a good job of it. Now, next. Because the retreats are big. thing and I can tell that it's fairly stressful for you on the actual at the time it's hard

Kym Vulling