People who inspire me: Lionel Messi

Lionel Messi’s mastery of football is extraordinary. The close control, the balance, the ability to slip past defenders or deliver a perfectly weighted pass through a gap that hardly seems to exist. What makes him the greatest footballer in my eyes is the combination: a magnificent goalscorer who is also an exceptional creator, capable of shaping a match as well as finishing it. Watching him, I get that wonderful feeling of seeing someone turn their craft into art.

But what inspires me most is how he has adapted his game as he has grown older. During his first five matches at the 2026 World Cup, 64% of the distance he covered was at walking pace. Over that stretch, he made 298 high-speed runs compared with Harry Kane’s 600—roughly half as many. The comparison varied considerably between players, but the underlying picture was striking: Messi was choosing his moments with extraordinary care.

His walking has long attracted criticism. To me, it increasingly looks like mastery. He is watching the defenders, reading the spaces, finding positions where nobody is quite sure whose responsibility he is. He conserves his energy until an opening appears, then comes alive. His teammates’ willingness to do the additional defensive running helps make this possible. There is something deeply inspiring about that combination of individual understanding and collective trust.

I also admire the person he seems to be. Teammates describe someone humble, approachable and keen to belong to the group despite his extraordinary status. One small gesture says a great deal to me: when Inter Miami won the 2023 Leagues Cup, Messi insisted that the previous captain, DeAndre Yedlin, join him in lifting the trophy. At a moment when every camera was on him, he made room for someone else.

As I get older myself, I find his example particularly encouraging. Experience can deepen our understanding of where our energy matters most. We can adapt, become more discerning, and find fresh ways to contribute. Messi reminds me that there is wisdom in knowing when to walk, when to watch, and when to give a moment everything we have.

People who inspire me: Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson inspires me through his love of words and the sheer determination behind his extraordinary achievement. His magnum opus, A Dictionary of the English Language, was published on 15 April 1755 after more than eight years of work. It contained nearly 43,000 entries, exploring words’ meanings, origins and uses. Johnson undertook the enormous intellectual task himself, supported by a handful of assistants who helped copy and organise material. By comparison, the French Academy, with its forty members, had taken more than half a century to produce its dictionary. What an astonishing feat of sustained attention and perseverance.

His achievement is all the more remarkable given the difficulties he lived with. Johnson was almost blind in one eye, had impaired hearing, and bore scars from a childhood illness. He also experienced recurring depression and involuntary movements and vocalisations that later specialists have interpreted as likely Tourette syndrome, although this cannot be diagnosed with certainty retrospectively. Knowing that he accomplished so much while dealing with these challenges adds another dimension to my admiration.

As a lover and collector of quotes, I find his approach especially inspiring. Johnson was not only a wonderful source of wit and wisdom himself; he also filled his dictionary with approximately 114,000 quotations, drawing on writers such as Shakespeare, Milton and Dryden to illustrate the words he defined. Rather than leaving words isolated in their definitions, he showed them alive in literature, carrying thought, feeling and insight. His dictionary became, in the process, an extraordinary collection of other people’s writing.

There is something deeply appealing to me about that combination: creating something of your own while gathering and honouring the words of others. I recognise the pleasure of finding a passage that captures something beautifully and wanting to preserve it and share it. Johnson took that impulse and made it the work of years. His dictionary reminds me how much a love of words, patiently followed, can bring into the world.

People who inspire me: The Diarists

As a recorder and curator of my own life, I feel a kinship with the diarists—their impulse to pay attention, capture passing moments and put life into words. They inspire me to notice more, reflect more deeply and preserve something of our brief time here. A life noticed, cherished and remembered.

Samuel Pepys 

Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) was an English naval administrator who kept his famous diary for just over nine years, from January 1660 to May 1669. It captures an extraordinary period of history—the restoration of Charles II, the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London—alongside the everyday details of his marriage, meals, friendships and pleasures.

What inspires me is his realness. Pepys records his vanities, jealousies and extramarital affairs with remarkable candour, leaving a portrait full of flaws and contradictions. There’s something compelling about that willingness to put his imperfect self on the page. I’m also drawn to the combination of the intimate and the historic: one person’s private life unfolding within the great events of his time. It inspires me to record both my own small world and the wider world moving around it.

I’m also drawn to the private nature of his diary. Pepys wrote in shorthand, mixing languages to conceal some of his most intimate passages, and wasn’t writing for publication in his lifetime. To me, that speaks to the intrinsic value of keeping a diary: the satisfaction of capturing experience, reflecting on it and preserving it for oneself. The act itself is worthwhile, whether anyone else ever reads it or not.

“My own private condition very handsome, and esteemed rich, but indeed very poor” 

"but Lord, to see with what envy they looked upon all my fine plate was pleasant.” 

Anaïs Nin

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) began her diary in 1914, aged eleven, and continued for more than sixty years, until her death. It became an extraordinary lifelong undertaking, filling thousands of pages and eventually appearing in numerous volumes—a record of relationships, creativity and an intensely explored inner life.

What inspires me is the intimacy: the willingness to explore feelings, desires and contradictions that so often remain hidden. I’m drawn to the idea of a diary as a place to discover oneself, to give attention to dreams and passing emotions, and to find meaning through writing. Her lifelong commitment inspires me too. Over time, individual entries become something remarkable: a portrait of a person continually changing, discovering and becoming.

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.” 

“This diary is my kief, hashish, and opium pipe. This is my drug and my vice.”

Virginia Woolf 

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) began keeping a diary as a teenager. Her adult diaries span 1915 to 1941, published in five volumes that bring together daily life, friendships, reflections and the unfolding of her work as a novelist. They offer an intimate portrait of a wonderfully observant mind.

What inspires me is her close attention to her own inner life—the shifting moods, doubts and moments of clarity. Her struggles with mental illness make that self-exploration especially poignant, as does her persistence in creating through periods of difficulty. I’m also drawn to her sensitivity to everyday experience: how a walk, a conversation or a fleeting impression can become material for reflection and art. She inspires me to look more closely at both the world around me and the world within, and to give those observations a place on the page.

Happily I’m interested in depression; and make myself play a game of assembling the fractured pieces.” 

“not to play the part of censor, but to write as the mood comes or of anything whatever.” 

Andy Warhol 

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) kept his diaries in an unusual way: through regular morning phone calls to his friend and collaborator Pat Hackett, recounting the previous day. Spanning November 1976 to February 1987, they were edited by Hackett and published after his death. They capture a decade of his life, from celebrity encounters and artistic milestones to taxi fares, meals and everyday worries.

What inspires me is his keen observation and his attention to daily minutiae alongside the big events. Small details give a life its texture, and often become fascinating with time. I’m also drawn to the vulnerability beneath his public image—the doubts and longing that make him recognisably human. His diaries inspire me to preserve the seemingly ordinary, too: who I saw, what caught my eye, how a day felt. We can’t always know which details we’ll treasure later.

“Stayed till 3:00, too many people coming up to me to talk (cab $8).” 

“I’ve got these desperate feelings that nothing means anything.”

An excellent documentary I watched recently

Anne Frank

Anne Frank (1929–1945) began her diary on her thirteenth birthday in June 1942. Over the next two years, much of them spent hiding from Nazi persecution in Amsterdam, she recorded her fears, frustrations, relationships and hopes for the future. Her final entry was written on 1 August 1944, three days before her arrest. Published after her death, her diary became one of the most powerful personal testimonies of the Holocaust.

I visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam in 1997 and was so moved that I spent much of my time there with tears streaming down my face. What inspires me is her humanity: her honesty about her feelings, her desire to understand herself, and her capacity to keep dreaming amid fear and confinement. She wanted to become a writer, and her words have reached far beyond the life she was allowed to live. For me, her diary is a profound reminder of what recording a life can preserve: a unique voice, an inner world, a person we can still feel close to across time.

“When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived!” 

Henry David Thoreau 

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) kept his journal from 1837 to 1861, filling almost fifty notebooks with observations from his walks, encounters with neighbours, reading and reflections. It became a remarkable record of both the natural world and his inner life, and a source for his books and essays.

What inspires me is his attention. Birds, changing seasons, the details of a familiar landscape—there was always something more to notice. That speaks directly to my love of walking and photography, and my desire to capture the things that fill me with wonder. His example reminds me that keeping a journal can enrich the experience itself: knowing I want to remember a day encourages me to be more present to it. There is so much to discover when we take the time to look.

“My Journal should be the record of my love.”

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”

May Sarton

May Sarton (1912–1995) was a poet, novelist and diarist whose journals explored solitude, creativity, ageing and the rhythms of everyday life. In Journal of a Solitude, she brings together her garden, the seasons, books and relationships with a deeply personal account of her emotional and spiritual life.

What inspires me is her honesty about the challenges of being alone, even when solitude is something she treasures. Her appreciation of beauty sits alongside loneliness, frustration and self-doubt. I’m drawn to that openness, and to the nourishment she finds in gardening, writing and small daily pleasures. She reminds me that a life worth recording includes the difficult days too, and that reflection can help us understand what sustains us.

“I have written every poem, every novel, for the same purpose — to find out what I think, to know where I stand.”

“I am here alone for the first time in weeks, to take up my ‘real’ life again at last.”

  

Favourite singers: Linda Rondtadt

I have just watched the incredible documentary Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice, and it has left me loving her more than ever. First, that voice. What a voice! Such power, clarity and warmth, with the ability to move from the tenderest phrase to something that seems to fill your whole being. Her great gift was as an interpreter: she could take someone else’s song and make it utterly her own. When she sang, the emotion felt lived, as though she were finding the words for something she had felt herself.

Then there was her extraordinary musical courage. She could have stayed with the rock and country music that made her a star, but her curiosity kept taking her somewhere new. Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance on stage; the sumptuous standards she recorded with Nelson Riddle; the traditional Mexican songs of her family heritage. People in the industry warned her against some of these changes of direction, yet she trusted her love of the music, and audiences followed her. I find that deeply inspiring: the willingness to become a learner again, to risk failure, and to follow what moves you even when others cannot see the sense in it.

Knowing that she eventually lost her ability to sing makes watching her performances almost unbearably poignant. Her illness was initially diagnosed as Parkinson’s and later identified as progressive supranuclear palsy. To lose something so central to your life, and such a profound source of pleasure, is hard to imagine. What moves me in the documentary is the matter-of-fact courage with which she speaks about it, and the humour and intelligence that remain so unmistakably hers. I came away grateful for all the music she has given us, and full of admiration for the woman herself.

Favourite songs: Wonderful Life (Katie Melua)

I love Katie Melua’s version of Wonderful Life. Knowing that she recorded it several years after a serious mental health crisis makes it especially poignant for me. There’s a tenderness and melancholy in her voice that gives the song’s hope such depth. I hear it as an affirmation of life that makes room for its pain—a quiet recognition that, even after great suffering, there is still beauty to discover and life to love.

Favourite photographers: Nick Brandt

I love Nick Brandt’s black-and-white photographs of African wildlife. They are evocative, moody and powerful. The animals feel like individuals, each with its own presence and dignity. Without colour, the textures, light and shadows become even more striking: wrinkled skin, pale grass, vast skies. There is something timeless about these images, and often a sadness too—a sense of how magnificent these creatures are, and how much we stand to lose.

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Favourite songs: Hallelujah (Jeff Buckley)

I watched the documentary It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley the other day and was really moved. What a voice he had, and what an amazing human being came through in the film: sensitive, curious, funny, and so alive to music and the world around him. One of my favourite moments was his former girlfriend Rebecca Moore saying, “He drank up the world like a sponge.” I love that image. That openness to experience, that hunger to absorb everything and feel it deeply, is something I find enormously inspiring. 

It’s heartbreaking to think that Grace, now revered as one of the great albums, was the only studio album he completed in his lifetime. He drowned accidentally in 1997, aged just 30, with so much still ahead of him. Listening to what he left us, I can’t help imagining what he might have gone on to create. How would that extraordinary voice have matured? Where would his curiosity have taken his music? The documentary left me feeling both grateful for what we have and terribly sad for the man, and all the music, we lost.

I love Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, but Jeff Buckley’s version is my favourite. There’s so much expression in his singing: tenderness, longing, sorrow, and something like surrender. With just his voice and that beautiful guitar accompaniment, it feels deeply intimate. 

He had such a powerful voice with such an extraordinary range, yet it’s the relative restraint here that touches me most. That power held in reserve makes the moments when his voice opens up all the more moving. There’s such feeling in the way he holds a note or lets it fall away. I can return to this performance again and again and still feel deeply.

People who inspire me: Libby Sommer

Libby is one of my favourite people at Photography Meetup.  Apart from being warm, friendly and fun, she is also an incredible writer who currently specialises in poetry. She is the author of a number of poetry collections, and novels and her poetry, short stories and non-fiction have appeared in many prestigious literary journals and other publications in Australia and overseas.  She is a fountain of wisdom about the art of writing and I've been gleaning lots of inspiration and great advice from her. Her partner is Jason who I've also really bonded with. He and I have become movie buddies, meeting up at Event Cinema in George Street to watch some great releases, followed by animated movie discussions at the nearby Three Monkeys pub.

Libby's blog

Lighthouses

"I can think of no other edifice constructed by man as altruistic as a lighthouse. They were built only to serve."  George Bernard Shaw

Lighthouse photos I've taken in Australia

Why I love lighthouses

There has always been something about lighthouses that draws me in. They carry the weight of history, standing through storms, wars, changing coastlines and countless human stories. Each one has watched generations come and go, quietly fulfilling the purpose for which it was built. They are monuments not to power or glory, but to service.

Perhaps that is why they feel so deeply symbolic. A lighthouse does not force its light on anyone; it simply shines, offering guidance to those who choose to navigate by it. There is something profoundly beautiful in that image. And then there is their sheer visual presence. Perched on rugged cliffs, lonely islands or windswept headlands, they are among the most photogenic structures ever created—where engineering, landscape, history and metaphor come together in a way that never fails to stir my imagination.

Lighthouses I've photographed

All posts tagged "lighthouse"

• All lightouse posts

Sydney

• Barrenjoey Lighthouse  (Palm Beach)
• Hornby Lighthouse (Watsons Bay)
• Macquarie Lighthouse  (Vaucluse)
• Vaucluse Bay Front Leading Light  (Vaucluse)
• Western Channel Pile Light (South Head)
• Cape Bowling Green Lighthouse  (Pyrmont)
• Parriwi Head Lighthouse (Mosman)
• Bradleys Head Lighthouse (Mosman)
• Grotto Point Lighthouse (Manly Scenic Walk)
• Robertsons Point Lighthouse  (Cremorne)
• Cape Baily Lighthouse (Botany Bay National Park)
• Henry Head Lighthouse (La Perouse)
• All Sydney lighthouses

NSW

• Flagstaff Point Lighthouse & Breakwater Lighthouse   (Wollongong)
• Nobby Lighthouse  (Newcastle)
• Kiama 
• Green Cape Lighthouse (Eden)
• Point Perpendicular  (Jervis Bay)
• All NSW lighthouses

Rest of Australia

• Great Ocean Road  (Victoria)
• Cape Tourville Lighthouse  (Freycinet, Tasmania)

South Africa

• Cape Point  (Cape Town)
• Green Point  (Cape Town)
• Kalk Bay  (Cape Town)
• Port St Johns  (Transkei)

⬇︎ Keep scrolling for all posts tagged as “Lighthouses”

The wonderful Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton was a big part of my childhood and something of an icon in our family. We listened to quite a lot of country music in those days, and Dolly was a firm favourite—especially “I Will Always Love You” and “Jolene,” two songs I have loved ever since. Her popularity only seemed to climb as the decades passed, until she became one of the rare figures in an increasingly divided America whom almost everyone could agree on. Much of that affection came from her personality: her warmth, humour, generosity, authenticity and wonderful ability never to take herself too seriously. I was deeply saddened today to hear that she has died at the age of 80. She felt like one of those enduring presences who would somehow always be there.

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I Will Always Love You

 

Jolene

 

Working 9 to 5

I also love Whitney Houston’s version of “I Will Always Love You,” which transformed Dolly’s gentle country song into one of the great vocal performances in popular music. It came about when Kevin Costner suggested the song for The Bodyguard after another choice fell through. Whitney’s soaring rendition became a worldwide phenomenon and introduced Dolly’s remarkable songwriting to a vast new audience.

Favourite photographers: David Doubilet

David Doubilet’s photographs fill me with an almost childlike sense of wonder. For me, no one captures the extraordinary underwater world of the ocean more beautifully—whether he is photographing the brilliant colours and teeming life of a coral reef or the cold, mysterious blue beneath the Antarctic ice. His images reveal a hidden world that feels vast, fragile and profoundly alive, making us see the ocean not as an empty expanse but as one of the most beautiful and miraculous realms on Earth.

I especially adore Doubilet’s split-level photographs, in which half the image lies above the water and half below. He has perfected this technique both technically and artistically, transforming the waterline into a threshold between two worlds—the familiar world of sky and land above and the secret universe beneath. I was introduced to his work when I attended a presentation he gave at the Sydney Opera House in 2014, and I was completely blown away. Seeing his images on that scale, while hearing the stories behind them from Doubilet himself, left an unforgettable impression on me.

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The artist at work, immersed in his medium

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Favourite directors: Paul Thomas Anderson

Paul Thomas Anderson is another of my favourite directors. I love the intelligence, ambition and unpredictability of his films, as well as the way he explores deeply flawed, obsessive and often lonely characters. From the sprawling ensemble drama of Boogie Nights and Magnolia to the brooding intensity of There Will Be Blood and the strange, intimate beauty of Phantom Thread, every film feels distinctively his own. His fluid camerawork, inspired use of music and remarkable ability to draw career-best performances from his actors make him one of the most original and accomplished filmmakers of his generation.

Movies I have seen

Favourite directors: Damian Chazelle

I love Damien Chazelle as a director, especially because of the extraordinary way he combines music, emotion and visual storytelling. La La Land and Whiplash are right up there with my favourite movies of all time. Although very different in tone, both explore the exhilarating power of artistic ambition and the painful sacrifices that can accompany it. Whiplash is electrifying in its intensity, while La La Land is romantic, visually beautiful and deeply bittersweet. Chazelle understands how music can drive a story and express emotions that words cannot—and he creates endings that linger in my mind long after the film is over.

I am equally in awe of Chazelle’s longtime musical collaborator, Justin Hurwitz, an incredible composer whose music is fundamental to the power of these films. The beautiful, aching melodies of La La Land and the fierce, propulsive original score of Whiplash do not merely accompany the images—they help tell the story and give the films their emotional pulse. Their partnership is made even more special by their friendship: Chazelle and Hurwitz met as students at Harvard, became roommates and bandmates, and began creating films together long before either was famous. That history must give them an extraordinary intuitive understanding of one another. Chazelle dreams in images and Hurwitz seems to know exactly what those dreams should sound like. 

 

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Movies watched

Favourite directors: David Cronenberg

David Cronenberg is one of my favourite directors because he makes films that are daring, intelligent and deeply unsettling. He is renowned for exploring the relationship between the body, the mind and technology, most famously through the disturbing body horror of The Fly. But his range extends far beyond horror: films such as A History of Violence, Eastern Promises and Crash reveal his fascination with identity, desire, violence and the darker reaches of human nature. His work is never conventional or easily forgotten—he takes strange, provocative ideas seriously and turns them into films that linger in the mind long after they end.

 

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Movies watched