I Used to Photograph Crime Scenes. Now I Make Fine Art. Here's What Connects Them.

I have had a camera in my hands for as long as I can remember. No formal training, no expensive gear - just a girl who couldn't stop looking at the world and wanting to capture it. I muddled along, played, photographed the life around me. It was instinct before it was craft.

Then I joined the New Zealand Police.

Within the force I found my way into the forensic photography section in Auckland, and my world changed completely. Nine of us, covering a city. Assault, homicide, fatal fires, vehicle crashes, aircraft accidents. If you can imagine it, I have likely photographed it. I won't go into detail - your imagination will take you far enough without my help.

What I will tell you is this: it was the most demanding photographic education I could have received, and I didn't even know it at the time.

I had one chance. Every single time, one chance to capture everything. And this was film, not digital - there was no checking the back of the camera, no instant reassurance that you'd got it. You had to know. The images I made weren't for galleries or Instagram - they were for courtrooms. For Judges and juries who would never stand in that space, who needed to understand exactly what had happened without being there. The photographs had to be precise, complete, and utterly clear. There was no coming back for a reshoot. No second light, no better angle tomorrow.

It didn't matter if the call came at 2am or midday, in blazing summer light or the pitch black of a winter night. We worked with what was there. We had to. The scene didn't wait for good conditions, and neither did we. You learn very quickly to see in the dark - literally and figuratively.

I was also, if I'm honest, an adrenaline junkie. Jumping out of planes, bungy jumping off bridges, the forensic work fitted that version of me perfectly. I lived on the edge of it.

Then I became a mother. We left Auckland, the pace slowed, but I still needed the adrenaline. The stillness has only arrived now my kids are adults.

And that's a story for another day.

What I can tell you is where I ended up, landscapes, fine art, a camera technique called Intentional Camera Movement where I have, once again, exactly one chance to get it right.

No filters. No digital manipulation. One moment of light and movement, and then it either is or it isn't.

Funny how that works.

The forensic training never leaves you. It taught me to see everything in a single frame, to look for what matters, to strip away the unnecessary, to make an image that someone who wasn't there can feel. I still do exactly that. The subjects are different. The stillness is different. But the eye is the same eye.

I went from the hardest edges of human experience to the quietest. From chaos to calm. From adrenaline to the soft blur of dawn over a lake.

I think I needed both to get here.

Michelle Fey