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Exposure: Gemma Deavin

Reportage and documentary photographer Gemma Deavin shows us her work on a moving edition of Exposure.

Lexy Savvides
Lexy is an on-air presenter and award-winning producer who covers consumer tech, including the latest smartphones, wearables and emerging trends like assistive robotics. She's won two Gold Telly Awards for her video series Beta Test. Prior to her career at CNET, she was a magazine editor, radio announcer and DJ. Lexy is based in San Francisco.
Lexy Savvides
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Suburbia

Gemma Deavin

(Credit: Gemma Deavin)

Photographer: Gemma Deavin

Speciality: documentary, reportage, portraiture

Biography: Gemma was born in the US and spent the first three years of her life in Johannesburg before migrating to Sydney. As a teenager Gemma lived in the Netherlands, where she developed a love of travel and different cultures, going on to spend eight months working in and travelling through Nepal, India and south-east Asia when she finished school.

While at university, studying a BA (Media and Communications), she spent two semesters on exchange in Scotland and Sweden. Gemma has written for The Sydney Morning Herald and worked in Cambodia as a reporter and photographer for The Phnom Penh Post. Photography, specifically reportage and portraiture, is something she has always pursued independently.

When she finished her degree 18 months ago she started her own business Tellwell Communications, an integrated communication service for non-profit and community organisations, and socially informed campaigns. She is passionate about people, their stories and using words, photography and video as vehicles to incite change and action.

Photography...is a major force in explaining man to man. — Edward Steichen

Equipment: Canon EOS 50D, Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6, Canon EF 50mm f/1.8

Want to ask the photographer a question? Leave your comments and questions below!

Every April, Khmer New Year rolls around and Sydney's biggest Buddhist temple, in Bonnyrigg, is home to the festivities. Here, a suburban house is framed with the atmospheric light of the annual Cambodian celebration.

Exposure: 1/6, f/5.6, ISO 800, 85 mm

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Who's in?

A two-up game outside the Australian Hotel in the Rocks, Sydney in full swing.

Exposure: 1/4000, f/5.0, ISO 800, 17 mm

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A Christmas wish

Family and friends gather to sing carols days before Christmas in a Sydney home.

Exposure: 1/20, f/5.6, ISO 3200, 35 mm

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Kitty

Walking through Windorah, a small south-western Queensland town, I saw Kitty playing in a wide puddle as the sun was setting. Dressed in her best pink outfit she spent hours splashing about until it was time to go in for tea.

Exposure: 1/250, f/7.1, ISO 320, 17mm

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Bedourie's Joe

Joe spent most of his life working as a stockman on the cattle stations of south-west Queensland. He now calls Bedourie, a town on the edge of the Simpson Desert, home.

Exposure: 1/250, f/8, ISO 100, 80-200mm

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Andy and Harry

Andy Jenkins is the only person in Australia who has a licence to deface coins. Inside his Silverton 'coinery' shed he creates interesting pieces of jewellery. He is also the proud foster parent of some orphaned joeys.

Exposure: 1/250, f/4.0, ISO 1250, 17mm

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Smoko time

Rex and his co-worker walk up and down King Street, Newtown, collecting rubbish for the City of Sydney Council.

Exposure: 1/10, f/5.6, ISO 1600, 17mm

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Abundant smiles

The House with No Steps recycling factory outside Newcastle, NSW, employs 43 high support employees. Workers are responsible for, amongst other things, packing 14 tonnes of cardboard a day.

Exposure: : 1/100, f/6.3, ISO 1000, 47mm

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I challenge you

This characterful young boy was intent on demonstrating his best 'action' moves along the boardwalks of Mabul Island, Sabah, Malaysian Borneo.

Exposure: 1/250, f/11, ISO 800, 43mm

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With each day

Two young girls smile in a world where each day they scavenge Phnom Penh's Steung Meanchey Dump for recyclable material to sell. Expatriate David Fletcher visits at least twice a week with a flat bed truck full of food and medical supplies. They are, otherwise, a forgotten community. For more information, click here.

Exposure: 1/1600, f/8, f/8, ISO 400, 18mm

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Hard brow

A young girl waits with hundreds of others for food at Phnom Penh's Steung Meanchey Dump.

Exposure: : 1/640, f/8, ISO 400, 28mm

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Sri Pada prayer

As the sun rises, a young boy stands in quiet prayer at the top of Sri Pada, Sri Lanka's most sacred mountain.

Exposure: 1/250, f/5.6, ISO 100, 50mm

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Shady respite

One of the four young boys finding respite under a small tin roofed structure after playing a robust game of cricket in between the tea plantations of Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka.

Exposure: 1/100, f/7.1, ISO 400, 61mm

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Crunch

A young boy in Fiji loses himself in a moment of amusement and hilarity.

Exposure: 1/200, f/8, ISO 400, 85mm

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Puddles

This was taken on a plane flying from south-west Queensland to Brisbane. The waterholes, filled by unseasonable but welcome rain, look like puddles in the red earth.

Exposure: 1/500, f/11, ISO 500, 85mm

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Tributary

Creek lines bleed across the channel country.

Exposure: 1/500, f/11, ISO 500, 85mm

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Milky plains

One lone track bisects a plain moving with colours and shapes.

Exposure: 1/640, f/13, ISO 500, 85mm

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