Hello! I’m Sarah, a South African photographer, mother of two, and storyteller living on the beautiful Mornington Peninsula.

I first got into photography when my brother let me use his camera at the age of 13. When I turned 14, I got really inspired by a few people around me. I started a Flickr account and took pictures of absolutely everything. I still go back to that account from time to time to see where the passion really started to grow. When I was 18 I took a trip to the US and brought my camera along with me. This is when I felt like I could really be a photographer and it’s all I ever thought about. Then one day I just stopped. I felt uninspired. I didn’t want to create any more and my well loved camera went into storage. I felt like a bit of me went into storage too.

Then about 10 years ago I found my old camera in that very dusty box and decided to have a little play. It didn’t quite grab me as I fondly remembered it used to, but it did get an upgrade from the box to the back of my cupboard. I see this little stage of life as placing the patient matches on the mantel piece, waiting for the fire to start burning again.

Growing up in South Africa and moving to Australia when I was 23 has shaped myself and my photography in so many ways. Africa will always have my heart and it’s where my passion for this art form began. The feeling of Ubuntu is something you live, experience and love. It taught me the importance of connection, community and presence, and those values naturally flow into the way I photograph people now.

Australia feels like my home too, more and more. By having this split feeling of two places you're meant to be in and missing family tremendously, I began to see how important photos really are. How important family photos are. It allowed me to understand the depth and beauty of nostalgia.

This is where I truly started to see the beauty behind documentary style photography and where my approach lays now. Honest interactions, authentic love and real laughs. I want my clients to look back at the photos I take and remember how they felt, the smell in the air, how their laugh sounded. I read somewhere once that photography is like poetry in picture form and I feel that’s exactly right.

Photo by Poppy Trewin Photography

By incorporating film and super 8 into my work I feel like it brings a gallery to life. The same moments, just different forms to look back on. It has especially captured me this year. Playing around with Super8, different kinds of film... it just feels like a bit of a playground for me. And having that patience waiting about 5 days for a roll of film to be developed... so hard! SO worth it.

Travelling and photography have always been my greatest passions, and being able to combine the two into a career has truly been life-changing. I’m forever grateful to do what I love every day. Creating art through photography and seeing people connect with and love my work is what brings me the most happiness. I also love meeting new people, experiencing different cultures, and capturing the beauty and stories that make every place unique.

More than anything, I love capturing love in all its forms , the quiet glances, windswept embraces, joyful chaos and fleeting moments that make your story uniquely yours.

Then, a few years later in 2019, one of my friends fell pregnant and I asked if I could do a little maternity shoot for her. The magic started to resurface for me. We were laughing, running on a dusty farm road, getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. But that’s just it - I started to feel a little alive again creatively!

Fast forward to 2021, I was making coffee at a little cafe in Frankston when one of my lovely customers, turned friend, asked me to photograph her wedding day. After one or two no’s, I caved in. I threw myself in the deep end. There I was, a few months pregnant with my first walking into the beautiful venue, Rupert on Rupert thinking that maybe I can actually do this.

When my second son was about a month old I started Sarah Lindbergh Photography. Doing free shoots where I could, even asking strangers if I could photograph them. What once felt uncomfortable became easy and now I get to call my passion my work. My art.

“The joy photography brings me is forever growing and a place I call home in myself and this world.”