a little about me

I’m Laura Brink, internationally award-winning Gold Coast Filmmaker and Photographer, specialising in the documentary art of birth.

I capture the real and raw nature of your experience as it unfolds - the emotional ebbs and flows as well as the physiological transformation of your body and soul as it traverses labour, birth, and those tender golden moments of your immediate postpartum. I believe with conviction and passion in preserving your own memory of birth, as well as revealing to you the unseen beauty, power and strength that I have the privilege of witnessing through my lens. Birth changes us and change in the world starts with birth.

I have been capturing hospital births, home births and free births for four years now, and amongst a number of prestigious awards, have received international acclaim as ‘2021 Birth Photographer of the Year’. But of course, birth photography and videography are just one part of me and my story.

I am mother to two beautiful children, William and Lotte, and wife to my husband Alex of six years now. I manage to run my business alongside being a mostly stay-at-home mama - but this isn’t easy, and I, like most mums, am just trying to balance all the things. As a family, we love to get outside in nature exploring the bush or beach, camping, animal spotting, and generally just having fun. Equally we love being homebodies and snuggling up together to watch a movie on the couch, crafting, building cubbies, and playing games like hide and seek. We really value natural, healthy living and try to live as sustainably as possible. Seeing and experiencing the beautiful land we live on is one of our biggest joys in life and we travel Australia in our caravan as often as the business of life allows.

Motherhood has been my most life-altering and fulfilling adventure yet. My own birth stories though were not how I expected my motherhood journey to begin - both ‘emergency’ caesarians. I use inverted commas here because I now know that the categorisation of ‘emergency’ was undoubtedly caused the cascade of interventions within the medical model. I was, like many new mothers, naive and vulnerable to the system. And I know on a personal level, the heartache of not having birth photos to reflect on and process this experience - can you believe I cancelled my own birth photographer mid-labour! It became very apparent that my birth would be medicalised and I actually thought I would not want ‘that type of birth’ documented. This is honestly one my biggest regrets in life as a mother. Now all I have is a blurry, blown out iPhone photo of my son being lifted out of my belly in theatre and a small handful of phone images in recovery, one of which is me breastfeeding with an exhausted smile that says ‘what the fuck just happened to me?!’.

My second birth, to my daughter, was an attempted VBAC, sadly derailed by a number of interventions, my own subconscious fear and continued misguided trust in the medical system. My birth photographer, who I was adamant about having this time round no matter what, was denied access into the theatre, and so whilst I am grateful that my beautiful camera savvy midwife captured a small handful of images for me, I was still wheeled into surgery feeling completely robbed and angry.

I don’t want this for you. I don’t want this for any new parent. Birth is a rite of passage and you deserve to hold those memories, however they played out, in your heart forever. This is your birth and it’s absolutely not a rehearsal - you can not redo your birth, nor can you recapture those moments. If you’d like to know more, I would love to chat with you over an obligation free coffee. Get in touch via my enquiry form.