07 FionaLake

The WiRE Showcase Series -
Fiona Lake: Fiona is a professional photographer dedicated to explaining life in rural and remote areas. Since the first photograph sale in 1982, Fiona has developed a unique, multi-strand business to support this life-long advocacy. She began concerted efforts to not just 'preach to the converted' in 1992, with the printing of her first cattle station postcards - sold to tourists across northern
outback Australia. To bring the bush to the heart of Urban Australia, she has held exhibitions in venues such as Sydney's Bondi Pavilion and the Sofitel Hotel in Collins Street, Melbourne. Fiona has written feature stories for R.M. Williams 'Outback' magazine since 1999, and thousands of her three books featuring Australia's largest cattle stations have been sold worldwide.
The pioneering website Fiona launched in 2003 still receives first page rankings for many online searches returning millions of results, and it has been included in the National Library of
Australia's 'Pandora' project - a permanent record of websites deemed to be cultural significance. Fiona was the first Australian appointed to the three-person panel judging the International
Federation of Agricultural Journalists 'Start Prize for Photography'. Other career highlights include an ABC television 'Landline' feature, being invited to speak at the UK 'Farmers on Film' festival, and she is one of few artists to have had an exhibition opened by the Governor General of Australia (Major General Michael Jeffery). Fiona won this year's Qld Rural Press Club 'Rural Social Media'
award. Fiona has taken aerial photographs from choppers since 1988 and she is now a licenced drone pilot. Her work takes her across Australia and further afield, running workshops and public speaking, to pass on what she has learned. In August-September 2018 Fiona is leading a fabulous 'Paddock to Plate' farm tour to Ireland and the UK, with other tours to follow.