In Conversation with Hannah Puechmarin

It is with a great deal of joy that I press publish on this interview with renowned Interiors & Lifestyle Photographer, Hannah Puechmarin. 

You will no doubt have seen Hannah's work across magazines such as Home Beautiful & Country Style, as well as gracing Airbnb listings for unique stays across the country.

You can find Hannah Puechmarin on Instagram at @hannahpuechmarin, or via her website, hannahpuechmarin.com, where you can dive into her portfolio and sign up for behind the scenes newsletters. 

You can find more online at morganjournal.com and on Instragram @morganjournal.

Transcript

MJ Podcast - Hannah Puechmarin

Morgan: Well, Hannah, it has been so beautiful to watch your creative and professional journey unfold. Instagram may be many things, but we are part of a generous, collaborative community online, and I'm so glad it connected us. I've been in awe of not just your talent, as a photographer, which I can honestly say inspires me daily, but of your gentle nature, which comes through in everything you do. Your wonder at the natural world and the way you convey beautiful simplicity are reflected not only in your work but in your words. For those who have stumbled across you most recently, they will have found an incredibly accomplished, frequently published, and well-travelled interiors and lifestyle photographer. Your portfolio is brimming with soul-filled homes and spaces that speak to those who want to slow down and appreciate every detail you've captured. How are you and how do you? About where you are in your journey? 

Hannah: I feel really embarrassed about what you’ve just said!

Morgan: I didn’t mean to make you embarrassed!

Hannah: I'm like, oh, that's so nice. Thank you. Um, how do I feel about where I am in my journey? Yeah. Um, I feel very - I feel very grateful because I'm at this weird point where I feel like I've checked a lot of boxes that I had set for myself. But that's a weird place to be in, because then you have to kind of go, okay, what are the new goals that I want to set for myself now that I've kind of achieved a number, like pretty much like kind of all the ones I set for myself. I've kind of done, really, which is kind of crazy. Right? 

Morgan: Which is beautiful. 

Hannah: And it's funny to think back, you know, like, I found this journal, maybe earlier this year. And I think it was maybe written in like twenty seventeen or something like that. It was like goals for this year, and it was like travel to France and, you know, do these things. And, I didn't do any of those things that year. I think maybe even one of them probably was like, be published in a magazine, and that wouldn't have happened that year.

Morgan: But all of those goals have happened since.

Hannah: Yeah, but you know, I also think back to even like in my home life, I went to this little workshop years ago that Peppermint Magazine held. And they said, draw a picture of where you are now, and draw a picture of where you want to be in five years. And so I drew a picture of my house that I lived in in Gaythorne in Brisbane, that I loved. And then I drew a picture of a house on top of a hill. And now I'm on top of a mountain. So I did that too, which is quite cute.

Morgan: It's amazing how many of us gravitate to the top of a mountain.

Hannah Yes.

Morgan: Yes, there must be something in that. You credit your parents for your love of nature and home. Do you have any memories that stand out for you from your childhood that have impacted your creativity even now?

Hannah: My parents took us camping quite a lot when we were younger. So, you know, spending time out in nature a lot and bushwalks. And where I live now, Mount Glorious, this is where we would come on picnics, and we would go on hikes. And, I have strong memories of walking through the rainforest here and hearing a Catbird calling. Do you know what they call sounds like? It sounds like a crying baby. And so it's quite alarming to hear when you're a little child walking through the forest. And I hear it now, and I just think it's the most magical thing, so I remember that quite a lot. And then in terms of homes and Mum, Mum's always taken quite a lot of care, and you know, setting up our nice home. And she loves old antique furniture and old China and things like that. So I've definitely inherited that love for old things. And then we'd often go on drives through Ipswich, and we'd look at all the old houses. We'd go to Queen's Park for a picnic, and then Mum would drive us around and say, "Look at that house". And, you know, she'd point out places maybe where, my grandmother might have grown up or, you know, family homes that are in Ipswich from previous generations and then just other ones that she'd loved, and we'd see them slowly degrading over the years as well, because many of the ones that my mother loved have fallen into disrepair. But yeah, so I remember that and just loving the exterior of homes and then kind of going, I wonder what's behind those closed doors. And now that's literally like, that's what I do. And I'm such a house perv. And it's the best job.

Morgan: Well, speaking of that, you know, I'm going to say this word correctly or incorrectly as a self-proclaimed philocalist. Is that correct?

Hannah: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I had to YouTube that word as well to find out how to say it.

Morgan: “Lover of beauty”.

Hannah: Yeah, I found that word recently on Instagram, and I thought, "That's amazing". It's gorgeous.

Morgan: I love that, and I love how it sits on your website. And it just represents you so beautifully. And the moments that you capture of the in-between moments of life. What do you look for when you pick up your camera? Like, is it something you actually think of, or is it coming naturally, and you are not thinking in those moments?

Hannah: When I first started taking photographs, that was kind of the thing my camera was always drawn to. Like, just like some fallen petals on the footpath or the sunlight backlit in the garden, and like a lovely little, freshly laid chicken egg, and Mum and Dad's chicken coop. So, like those kinds of things that my lens was always kind of drawn to. I definitely feel like once you start doing client work, things change. And it no longer becomes about you. And what you want is the photographer. It's kind of like balancing, you know, your creative input and styles alongside the client's own personality in their brand, and you kind of have to merge those two. So, I still love being able to capture the beautiful light at the end of the day, streaming in through the windows of a home if I am there. I'm always drawn to capturing those lovely little moments, like posies of flowers that someone's maybe picked from the garden in their home. I love to make my images feel a bit more lived in. So sometimes I might not be able to just capture those genuinely lived-in moments. But I'm seeking to kind of create them and make that the feeling of the image, so that when someone sees that image down the track, they feel really warm and fuzzy, and they go, oh, I just want to I just want to be in that image.

Morgan: Oh, and I feel like that's how you have emerged for everyone. When we talk about your journey and how you've ticked off those goals, it's because you do that so beautifully. It has been amazing to watch the evolution of your work. But that one thread has never changed.

Hannah: Yeah. Yeah. So it's it's something you have to kind of continue to strive to create in client work, especially when I do a lot of work for interior designers and they might be doing quite a high end beautiful project, but there might be some really sleek, perfect finishes and, seeking to kind of create those more soft lived in moments kind of can come with seeking out, like maybe the more beautiful light pouring in through the windows and maybe living with the imperfections of light a little bit more as well, while everything else within the scenes perfect looking.

Morgan: I love that we can look for imperfection in light instead of searching for perfect light if we're getting nerdy and photography for a minute. In my experience, every creative person has a memory of the first time they fell in love with their art form.

Hannah: Mhm.

Morgan: Can you tell me about that moment for you?

Hannah: I think one of the first things that springs to mind is the moment when I dropped my first camera in a rock pool, and how much I cried. 

Morgan: I'm about to cry for you. 

Hannah: Yes. Because I loved it. It was the camera Mum bought me when I was thirteen, and I'd taken the most horrible photos, but I dropped it in the rock pools at Yamba. And that was a very sad moment, and I cried a lot. And then we replaced it with a new one. But it was never quite the same as the first one. But yeah, I just, I don't know, I just loved taking photos of just random things when I was younger, through high school, and Mum encouraged that in me. I guess that's probably my first, if I think back to it.

Morgan: The moment you realised that you loved it too much.

Hannah: I really loved my camera so much, and what it kind of meant to me.

Morgan: Oh. That's beautiful. Can you take us back to the beginning? Before you were the interiors and lifestyle photographer that we know today. Can you tell me where did your journey begin?

Hannah: Well, I think I loved it. I did art at school. I don't feel like my art teacher. I was not a favourite. I was not a teacher's pet at school. I wasn't one of the favourite art students, and she was a lovely teacher, but I really wanted to kind of, like, look into using photography in my art through the projects we're working on, but I never felt that she particularly encouraged it. I think maybe some other students wanted to do photography, and she maybe wanted them to do that. But I still really loved it. And so, I still wanted to pursue it. I didn't know how to use a camera, so I actually went to TAFE straight after school and learnt how to use a DSLR for the first time. A huge learning curve, and that was really great, and things I learnt then are still super important to my work these days.

Morgan: That's wonderful.

Hannah: The thing I think I lean on a lot, even teaching my workshops on the weekend, was the difference in focal lengths that people so often overlook, and how focal length can really affect the look of the image. So I've really enjoyed kind of like showing people that even on the iPhone.

Morgan: I mean, that's something that I play with every single time I pick up the camera.

Hannah: Yeah, it just honestly like just backing up and zooming in, and it's amazing how much stuff you can just remove from the shot just by doing that. And so, yeah, I went to TAFE and did that, but it was quite scary, kind of facing the prospect of running your own business, uh, at seventeen, because really, as a photographer, it's very hard to get an employed position. 

Morgan: Yes it is. 

Hannah: They don't really exist. So I actually went to university, upon the recommendation of a woman on the end of the phone line to my mother. They suggested I enrol in the Bachelor of Mass Communications.

Morgan: Right!

Hannah: So I did that. Just because some random said I should. So I did that. I didn't know what that meant. Uh, I didn't know what public relations was, but I selected that as a major. And, it was also the beginning of social media. So I did a bit of a media major as well. So that kind of touched on all that, you know, Facebook and Twitter were around, so that was it. Yeah, that was quite interesting. I did enjoy it. I thought it was interesting, but I definitely finished that and thought, "No, that's not for me". I want to take photographs. And in that last year of uni, I did one of those, three hundred sixty-five projects. They were quite big back then, where you took a photo every day. Yes. So I had a Flickr account that's actually still live. You probably wouldn't be able to find it. I know it's there, and I love that it's there, and I can look back on it.

Morgan: I have a Blogspot account that no one will ever find because they don't know the name of it.

Hannah: I regret deleting my blogspot. Yeah, it's so sad. That's where I started, sharing homes that I photographed. So yeah, I worked part-time, and I just wanted to kind of just find my way in photography anyway. So yeah, just started kind of photographing anything. Photographing people. Eventually photographed my first home and loved doing that, and, wanted to do more of that and started photographing local homes. Just finding ladies on Blogspot. Or people going, "Oh, my friend has a beautiful home." And. Yeah. So, and on Instagram as well. I remember putting up this little cute grid on Instagram, being like, "If anyone's got a beautiful home, please reach out." And, I photographed this... She's still on Instagram, and I've worked with her in the years since. Kimberly is her name. Her Instagram handle is @kijaro, and I photographed her home, way back then, like, so long ago. And it was full of all these vintage curios, and she and her partner, like, made me a cake. And we had tea afterwards. It was so lovely.

Morgan: And that's what you've done ever since.

Hannah: And that's literally the thing, like, I'll go shoot someone's house and then we'll have tea and cake, and it's so good.

Morgan: Oh, and champagne.

Hannah Yes. Sometimes that too.

Morgan: So, how was it juggling employment as you started to build your business? Not many people would have known that you were employed part-time and full-time through this stage of your life, when you were building your business. How was that juggle?

Hannah: Well, I was quite fortunate to begin with, where I had a really lovely part-time role as a medical receptionist that I'd had through uni, and I had a really lovely workplace, like everyone there I loved, and they were really supportive of me as well. So, I didn't work too many days a week either. I lived at home for a long while, probably lived at home until I was twenty-three. And then when Cesar and I got engaged, we moved out of home, and I was still working as a medical receptionist. I did a couple of stints with a PR agency for a little bit as well. And all the while, just kind of trying to build my, I guess, almost a portfolio of clientele, trying to get some regular clients that would come back to me. And I did have a really lovely bunch of interior designers that I would work with, and I was always quite generous with sharing my images with whomever, in the way that I kind of hoped that they would love the images and book me for future work. And that did work in my favour. Then yeah, there was a stint where I worked full-time as a photographer, in fact, for a small business. And that was interesting. And I felt I remember my parents taking me out for dinner because we were just so excited that I had a full-time job in photography.

Morgan: Yeah. I mean, big moment.

Hannah: Yeah, I remember that. And they asked me how much I wanted to be paid at the interview because there is no award rate. And I really sold myself short as well. Anyway.

Morgan: I think we all would have done the same thing.

Hannah: Part of my role there also was doing the Instagram stories, so I wouldn't post them, but I would create all the content for Instagram Stories so they would have an Instagram story every day, a new one every twenty-four hours. Um, yes. So I did that. But yes, I think we briefly spoke about this beforehand, but I was made redundant after ten months in that full-time job.

Morgan: That would have been quite a transitional period for you that you hadn't planned on.

Hannah: Yeah, well, I had just come back from a four-week holiday overseas. It was in twenty eighteen and I had busted myself so hard trying to get enough content for them that all those four weeks of Instagram stories that's.

Morgan: That's a lot of work.

Hannah: I did all of that beforehand. They'd had a new collection coming out that I'd photographed and made sure that they were all perfectly cut out and that kind of thing. Um, and yeah, so I like to think that maybe they thought they didn't need me because I'd done such a good job at preparing them. When I was away for four weeks, they were like, "Why are we employing Hannah?" So it was literally the first day I got back from holidays to my job, and the HR manager was like, "Oh, we need to have a chat, and you're at risk of being made redundant." And I was like, okay. And then, like the next day, I was redundant.

Morgan: Thanks for the heads up, guys.

Hannah: That was quite awkward. Yeah, that was quite awkward. But, um, what I did, and I had really done minimal client work in those ten months as well, because it was very hard. So but what I did was email everyone that I had worked with in recent years, interior designers or maybe graphic designers, writers, anyone. And I just said, "Hey, I'm back! I'm available for work." I even just started emailing people. We were renting our home at the time. Yeah. And Caesar was working full-time at a vet's practice at that time. So he had a bit of money. I had some tax return money. I had some money saved that I was going to spend on refurbishing an old piece of furniture, and I used that to kind of like get me through those following weeks. And I had a couple of client jobs pop up, and in that moment, I was like, "Oh, I can't rely on anyone to keep me employed except for myself." Because this wasn't even just that one job, I'd had in those other roles I'd had over the years, where I'd had some awkward moments and maybe had some horrible bosses. And I knew that working in someone else's small business was not for me.

Hannah: So yeah, I did end up still getting another part-time job at that stage, but I went back to one that was, again, in the health space, in a bit of an admin communications role. And it was just three days a week. I literally went and didn't think about it when I came home, and I would do that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were my photography days, and that worked really well. I think I worked there for probably two years up until then, when I was able to quit and go full-time with my photography.

Morgan: That's wonderful. But you knew stepping out of that role where you were going.

Hannah: Yeah. And I knew well, I... it kind of just got to the point where I had just it was about February in 2021, and I'd booked out all my spare days in March with photo shoots. And I still had some more inquiries coming through. And I kind of thought, well, if I have all these shoots booked in, that equals X amount of money. And then if I quit my job, I can book these other shoots, and then that's going to be X amount of money. And that could maybe see me through to this point. And I have this much money saved. You know, maybe now's the time just to make the jump, the leap. And it was quite daunting because at the time Caesar was still studying at uni and I think he was probably... I think he was working every second weekend at that point. So he had a little bit of money coming in through that job, but I was the one paying all our bills and that kind of thing. So it was really quite important that I still be able to pay our bills and our mortgage. Yeah.

Morgan: But your inner knowing that that's what you needed to be doing.

Hannah: Yeah. So I kind of just did it. And yeah, obviously, it was the best decision I made. And then also just like, able to earn so much more money working for myself than working for someone else.

Morgan: And the knowledge that you can be flexible and in control of your own time.

Hannah: Yeah.

Morgan: That was quite a time for you. What impact did all of this have on your life, and not just your work? I look at how you're living now versus how you were living then. How did this change to self-employment and traveling impact your life?

Hannah: Well, I think I've been saying it a lot lately. My garden was a whole lot better when I wasn't working for myself full-time, because I remember when I had that part-time job, I would come home in the afternoons, and I would weed, and I would get out into the garden. After a long day in an enclosed office, I just wanted to be in the garden. And, working for yourself is very, very full on and, you know, is kind of like a non-stop job. So, probably a combination of the weather, the weather's been pretty bad the last few years, but my dahlias have definitely taken a turn for the worse since I've been working for myself. And traveling, for my work, is so lovely, but it's a lot. I love being at home. I love being here with my husband and my dog. And with the birds in the garden. It's just so nice. And I have a lovely group of friends that I love to try and see. A very small group of friends, but, you know, I love catching up with them is very important to me. But when I'm away a lot, it does really put a put a stretch on my time. Um, and we do live a bit further away. We live an hour out of Brisbane, so that kind of affects, kind of everything as well.

Morgan: I mean, it's a beautiful drive.

Hannah: Yes, yes.

Morgan: But I know how you feel.

Hannah: Yes. It's kind of like, since we've moved here, you have to be very well planned with your time. Driving home is never just driving home. I'm always stopping to maybe, you know, buy some cream so I can make the pasta for lunch when Morgan comes to visit. Um, but. And, like, you know, there's always kind of errands to do on the way home. So that when I get home, I don't have to leave for maybe the next four days because it's 25 minutes back down to the grocery store. So, yeah, working full-time, I guess, I'm here a lot on my own as well. So while I might drive two hours up to the Sunshine Coast and do a shoot, and I get to, like, kind of talk with my client then, and that's really lovely. But then for the next few days, I'll come home and I'll be here, and, um, that's why getting Marmalade after we lost our other dog was quite important to me. So I had, like, a little pal.

Morgan: You sound like a homebody in every sense of the word. Is that right?

Hannah: Yeah. I just love being here, and I love, you know, obviously, I love collecting things, and I love making my home feel cozy. And, a lot of things that I have, I guess I remember where I bought them from or maybe who gave them to me, or they might remind me of a time in my life. 

Morgan: That's beautiful.

Hannah: Yeah.

Morgan: That leads me perfectly into my next question. I do see that you live with the same intentionality as those homes that you photograph. How did you come to find your home in the rainforest?

Hannah: Ah, well, as I said, I grew up coming up here, and I always really loved it. I was saving really hard to buy a home when I was younger. And then we moved out of home, and my savings, um, dwindled a little bit, like, stopped. Stopped growing, I guess. But I kind of had thought of living up here at one point, but Caesar had sort of started coming up here as well. He was looking for wildlife with friends and that kind of thing. And he was really loving coming up here. And, we just really wanted to live amongst nature a little bit more and and we lived in Brisbane in a suburb that was quite leafy on the Kedron Brook, and that was really lovely. But yeah, we just wanted a bit more space, I think. And we loved coming up here for walks together as well. So we thought it would be nice to. Yeah, come move up here. But uh, the market up here is quite small. It's a very small area. There's only maybe two hundred. Um, I think it's only about two hundred people that live up here in Mount Glorious. And, we were looking for somewhere to rent to begin with, but there weren't many rentals. Um, the house down the street was available for rent. Um, but it was a bit expensive for us anyway. And then this place popped up for sale, and we didn't really think we'd buy it.

Morgan: Isn't that everyone's start to the story? "We didn't really think we'd buy it."

Hannah: We just came along just for fun. It was a Saturday morning. We're like, yeah, why not? And it was a beautiful day. Kind of like a day like this. It was in, um, it was in December, early December, and we came up here, and it was a beautiful, cool summer day. Blue skies. The lawn was so lush, and we walked in and we're like, oh my gosh, this place is so fun. We could live here. And there was a bird. My husband spotted a bird hopping through the windows outside and and he was kind of like, "Oh, these birds are really cool up here." 

Morgan: Sold by the birds. 

Hannah: He loves his birds. Um, and so yes, we kind of were like, okay, we went to have a debrief at the Elm House cafe. It's no longer operating as a cafe anymore. We went there and had an orange juice and sat down, and we're like, okay, how do we, how gosh, how do we buy this place? So, um, yeah, kind of made it happen. And it was a bit of a process trying to get a loan and everything like that. It was at the time of the I think it was like the Royal commission.

Morgan: There was a lot going on.

Hannah: It was early 2019, but yeah, got it all sorted and we moved in in March twenty nineteen. And yeah, it was just the best.

Morgan: That's such a good story. I honestly think everyone's story starts with we didn't think we would.

Hannah: Oh yes.

Morgan: And how does your home and life with your husband Cesar inspire you?

Hannah: Well, I love that we... He likes nice things as well. And he does kind of let me do what I want. But his little setup is quite nice around his desk. He does have a bit of an aesthetic. And, uh, I remember when we first moved in together, ten or eleven years ago, the merging of our styles was quite interesting because I had all these cute China teacups and he had all these fossils and we had a mix of them on the bookshelves. It was quite quaint. Uh, I've probably overtaken a lot more of the space, but I still think, um, he loves old things like I do. He loves old timber furniture and that kind of thing. So, um, but yeah, we love getting out and going for walks, which doesn't happen very often anymore, unfortunately. We do lead very, very chaotic lives. But we used to love just popping out with our binoculars down to the national park and going for a walk in the rainforest and trudging through the mud and going down to the waterfall and that kind of thing. And yeah, being here amongst the birds and the garden is just so lovely and peaceful, and we love spending just time here.

Morgan: I mean, both of you having jobs that require a lot of travel, a lot of hours on your work, for both of you coming back here would feel like a retreat.

Hannah: Yes. I always feel like my driveway starts at the bottom of the mountain. I feel like I'm already home when I'm there, even though it's still another twenty minutes. No, but I agree.

Morgan: I felt that way. Starting up the mountain. I'm like, it actually feels like I'm just... This is the journey to Hannah's place.

Hannah: Yes. When I worked that part-time job and I would be coming home at about 4:30pm or so in the afternoons. Gosh, the drive home was just always so beautiful. Yeah. And I just think, oh my gosh, I'm so excited to be coming home to this beautiful place. Even though it's further away from everything, it's just worth it.

Morgan: The drive is incredible. I've been so excited to see your exploration into your workshops and your teaching, which is a different facet of work for you. How did these come to be?

Hannah: Well, I said, I learnt at TAFE basics, basic camera skills. But when I decided I wanted to start photographing homes, it was all these questions were popping up for me. You know, what aperture should I use? I just thought maybe I'd have to use like the smallest aperture possible, like f22 or f16. Um, which really, no, you don't, you don't need... You can shoot on f8, and that like will just get the room pretty much all of it in focus and quite still, quite sharp. So that's what I use now when I'm shooting a full room. It's something I teach in my workshop. Yeah. 

Morgan: Take note of everybody. 

Hannah: So just like those kinds of technical things and, you know, I would see the homes in magazines and think, oh wow, like, I want to shoot like that, and how can I do that? So I guess I looked to those really editorial style interiors to inform my work. And I did remember I reached out to a handful of photographers. I felt quite awkward reaching out to photographers, asking if maybe I could assist, and I guess I never really had much to offer in terms of assisting because I didn't know anything. Having a good assistant is a valuable thing. Having them actually know things. Yes. And I just still didn't know anything. So, unfortunately, I never really got any good assistance. I did do a couple of assisting shoots with a photographer in her studio. But it wasn't really interiors; I never got to go on an interior shoot with her. So, I really just learnt by making a lot of mistakes. And then, um, just found my way through it, and, and so I kind of then got to this point where people were starting to ask me, how do I do this, and how do I do that? And, um, I kind of thought, oh, well, you know, people want to learn this like I did. Yeah, someone asked me to do a mentoring session one time, so I just said yes. And then I did that, and I thought, well, this is kind of cool. And then slowly people started asking if I would do workshops, and I guess, oh, yeah, you know, I will one day. And so, yeah, kind of have finally.

Morgan: One day came.

Hannah: Yeah. It was super daunting though, because I find putting into words or saying out loud what I do very, very it's very, very hard. It does just come so naturally to me now. I literally do it without thinking.

Morgan: I was just marvelling at the fact that you were able to put that together and thinking of the work that it would have taken to get it out of your head and into something that people could learn from.

Hannah: It's why I haven't really designed a workshop that's for people who have a camera that they want to learn the basic settings of, because it's almost like that really basic level stuff is almost so hard for me to explain, because I learned that so, so long ago. It's so entrenched in me now. Teaching someone how aperture works and ISO works is actually just so simple.

Morgan: Yeah.

Hannah But then really trying to get that message across to them. I know it's so hard to get your head around sometimes.

Morgan: When it's brand new.

Hannah: When it's brand new.

Morgan: It's a bit mind-bending.

Hannah: Yeah. So that's why I haven't done that bit. I kind of want people to know how to use their camera already. So then I can kind of like talk more, slightly more top-level stuff.

Morgan: Yeah.

Hannah: Um, or taking it really, really, really back to basics in terms of doing the smartphone photography.

Morgan: Which is great. What was it actually like for you to step out from behind the lens and into the spotlight for this project? Have you sort of felt yourself transforming over these last few months?

Hannah: I do really love meeting people, and I do love hearing people's stories. So I think that's been really great to kind of get to know people, through my workshops in that way. And then, see how they react to the things that I'm sharing with them. So, that's been really lovely. But yeah, it's certainly quite different getting up in front of a group of people. But I've been really lucky where, um, people who have come along to my workshops have actually known a few of them most of the time.

Morgan: That definitely helps.

Hannah: Apart from the time I did the Western Australian one late last year. I didn't know anyone there, so that was a bit daunting, but I've obviously done it alongside some people that I knew. So I did some with Cheryl last year, and then I did one with Helen in Western Australia, and it was really good to do it with them because they had already done workshops before, and then this year, doing it with Fiona at Palmer and Gunn has been really great because Fiona's been a wonderful help in supporting me and helping me set up for the workshops, and then the guests that have come along to those have been some clients. I had like four clients of mine on Sunday at the workshop, so that's beautiful. Yeah, it was really sweet. Yeah.

Morgan: Yay! That's that's I mean, that's the best case scenario. What do you love most about your work and your way of life here in the mountains? What I love.

Hannah: Most about my work, I think as much as I say, like working as a freelancer is so, so hard. And you have to be so, you have to be business-minded as well. Not everyone's cut out to run a business for themselves, but I love that I do get such flexibility in my life from it. So while I do have to maybe go away for longer periods of time, I was just away for about a week down in the Newcastle region, you know, I can have my mum up for lunch really easily, or I can I can finish early or start late, um, on my days at home, of course. But I have that real flexibility. And actually, these days I'll even get up and make my coffee, and I'll go sit at my desk first thing with my coffee. Um, which is, which is good. It's kind of sad because I used to love sitting in the garden with my coffee first thing, but I go and have my coffee at my desk, maybe do a few emails, do a few little things, and then I'll get changed and Marmalade and I will go for a big walk. And then we'll come home and I'll have like a bit of breakfast and maybe another cup of tea. And, you know, by that point it's probably like nine thirty or ten. Yeah. So, and then I'm back at my desk doing some more work. So I love that I can kind of just make my day work for me and whatever I've got on. I don't consider myself a particularly social person. I have, as I said, like really tight-knit groups of people that I love and love seeing. But it's a bit of a retreat here, and doing photo shoots, often with new people, I'm meeting new people a lot of the time, and that's really lovely and interesting. But I can just come here and retreat and just be here by myself. And, we do have a really lovely community here that I know people are here when I need them. Um, but I tend to just kind of come in the front gate and stay in here and sit in my garden and watch the birds, and I just love that kind of peace that it brings.

Morgan: I'm nodding and smiling because we're very similar in that way. Yeah. What is next for Hannah Puechmarin? Oh.

Hannah: Lots of exciting things.

Morgan Yeah.

Hannah: At the end of last year, I was working on one of the biggest projects I've ever worked on, and I'm still working on it, but it's over to someone else to do some work for me now. But yeah, I've been working on that. So that will be coming out next year. So that'll be really exciting.

Morgan: And a lot of work.

Hannah: But it was a huge amount of work and a huge amount of my own funds that I had to put into it. So, that's been the most rewarding part and had come probably at a good time when I was, you know, when you're doing work for everyone else all the time and you're not feeding your own creative soul. This project was a bit more of like a soul-feeder, which was really great. So yeah, I'm really looking forward to kind of being able to share that with everyone and seeing, I guess, maybe where I can take myself from there. I don't really know where that will go yet. So for the meantime, I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing.

Morgan: Sort of the practical way of manifesting the next iteration.

Hannah: Yeah yeah.

Morgan: Well, Hannah, thank you so much for speaking with me today. The way you look at the world will always inspire me.

Hannah Oh. Thank you.