Rosana Kersh Photographer | Townsville Portrait Photography

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About Rosana Kersh Photography

Who are you?

Do you still have parents? Grandparents? Let’s start a legacy PHOTO wall for you❤️📷🙏🏻

AND When was the last time you loved a portrait of yourself?

Who would you LOVE to be photographed with?

Have you ever had your own special personal Photoshoot?

It is my job-to take the best photo you have ever seen of yourself!

The essential shot of Rosana Kersh.

Professional photographer, Rosana Kersh, believes it is essential to have good communication between her and her client in order to get the right shots. “I feel it is extremely important in how you deal with people,” she admits. “There is nothing worse, in my mind, of seeing all those clichéd, staged shots of weddings. ‘Stand here, do this, do that, now pretend you are doing this.’ I have seen it all … and heard it all, over and over and frankly, I don’t think it does anyone justice. Least of all the poor bride and groom who are probably paying a fortune for very poor taste and run-of-the-mill shots. It is almost as though the photographer is bored and wants the whole thing over without any originality or fun involved. “However,” she says, “making the client feel at ease and comfortable makes them tell me exactly what they want. It is just being considerate. This can be especially so with a mother and child shoot or a newly married couple. Everyone is so unique and there is an essence to everyone. I love to capture that very essence. After all, it is all about them, and so it should be.”

Growing up in the far out back of Queensland on a sheep and cattle station, Rosana was educated by School of the Air. “There was no television and so we kept busy or occupied making things, drawing, painting and creating with what bits and pieces were around. There was never an ounce of boredom,” she reveals.

Both her parents are highly creative and have provided enormous inspiration. Norah Kersh, her mother, is a celebrated artist, children’s book illustrator and author.

Rosana was destined to be creative and so, fell into photography at the age of 12, when she received a camera from her brother, Conor. “I remember the camera and the day clearly,” she reflects. “It was a little 35ml film camera. I soon realised how visual I was. I also realised I wanted to capture everything. Just every little detail of whatever it was. My brother concentrating on fixing a saddle with his furrowed brow and biting his lower lip. My mothers tiredness, her hands kneading the dough for fresh bread for the next day. The colour of dawn, dusk, sunsets, shearing sheds, gum trees, drought, flood, birds, the gentle morning light and the soft afternoon light. The light! I realised it just about dictated the quality, the transparency and the clarity of every picture.”

After boarding school and High School at Charters Towers, Rosana graduated with a Diploma in Commercial Art and Photography from James Cook University. She received Distinctions in Design, Composition and Photography. “My lecturer and eventual mentor, Kirsten had great faith in me. She told me I had a gift for capturing the spontaneous and the unguarded.”

To pay her way through a private Sydney college in order to further her design and photography skills, Rosana worked at BHP Cannington mine in Western Queensland, as a cleaner and bus driver. Following this she spent three years in Sydney where she studied five days a week and worked 6 nights per week. Of the three years in Sydney, for one and a half years Rosana worked in a pre-press film house as a designer.

Rosana then travelled overseas to the United Sates of America. Over two months she taught children ceramics at Emmerson Camp, Massachusettes. “This was an extraordinary opportunity for me teaching art to a variety of children from the United States, Korea and Greece.”

“This American experience was a lovely introduction for me as I then travelled onto Europe and naturally took photos continuously.”

Now back living mostly in Townsville since 2003, Rosana has thrown herself wholeheartedly into her passion of photography. “I do a lot of fashion and commercial photography, as well as family portraits, weddings and children’s photos,” she says. As I glance around the walls of her studio, it is the many different, enlarged prints of the mother and child that take my breath away. They are all in different poses, all candid. A mother hiding behind a tree in a beautiful woodland setting, playing hide and seek with her daughter. Such poignancy and topic and wonder that I have never seen anywhere. A child so in awe of something - seemingly holding the world in her hands.

“The greatest compliment and response I get is when the client cries upon seeing a picture of their child,” she admits. “It has happened a few times. It is extraordinary … like tears of joy. For me, no amount of payment is better than that one primal response from the client. It is hard to explain,” she continues modestly, “but it is only then that I feel I have done a great job.”

“It is my continual goal to get better and better,” she concedes. “One of my favourite quotes is ‘What is your favourite photo … the one I’ll take tomorrow.” As I ponder this, I get the feeling that Rosana can’t wait to take that perfect photo tomorrow. With Bridget Mullany.