1967 Sue McKay

I was born in 1967 in Adelaide, South Australia, to Italian migrant parents. I did well at school but dropped out, eager and earnest to graduate in my own way into adulthood and the working world. My teenage years were spent documenting day to day life in personal diaries and teaching myself photography. I had won two cameras in the space of six months and saw this as a sign that a career in photography was my destiny. My first full time job was in a professional photographic printing lab. I studied Photography at college and worked as a commercial photographer before transitioning to the advertising industry. It was there I gained basic administration and office management skills as well as dabbling in advertising production and design layout. I was tasked with proof reading and gained an obsessive tendency to spot spelling errors and extra character spaces at a glance, which I still have to this day. From 1992-1997 I lived and worked in London, honing my office management skills with one of the UK’s top 20 accounting firms. I held a portfolio of international clients mostly based in Lugano, Switzerland. It was one of the most exciting and challenging periods in my life - challenging in both the professional and personal sense. I began suffering panic attacks as my time overseas came to an end. Hoping to leave the terrors behind, I returned to Adelaide only to find anxiety had come for the ride. For good measure, depression joined the party. I drowned myself in partying and working excessively to hide my truth. Alcohol-fuelled late nights disguised my insecurities and the career accolades were validating, so I continued in that vain for many years. My career excelled and I job-hopped while temping through various industries such as accounting, state and federal government, not for profits and sporting. It dawned on me that this thing I was doing, shifting from here to there, job to job, industry to industry, slotting in seamlessly and picking up whatever tasks were on hand to ‘save the day’ was a unique skill. Capitalising on the valuable contacts I’d made and the demand for temporary staff at that time, in 2005 I started my own business contracting office professionals for short-term assignments. I named it Kick It To Me Admin Solutions, with the philosophy “Kick It To Me, I’ll do it for you”. Several derivatives followed; Kick It To Me Events. Kick It To Me Accommodation. Kick It To Me Trade Services. and Kick It To Me Shopping. In 2014, overworked and without direction, my enthusiasm for growing a bigger and better business empire waned.

In one of several moments when I purposely stopped to look inward, I asked myself, “What do you really want to do in life? What makes you happy?”
The answer took me back to my teenage years - I wanted to write and I wanted to photograph. That was all.

2014 The Other Sue McKay

It was in 2014 that I first openly admitted the other me existed; the me that craves artistic expression through writing and photography. At the time it was so very far from the Type A business woman and office corporate I had identified with. To this day the drive and ambition remains, but it’s a calm, soothing vibe that laces the work I now produce, like my mind has met my spirit. This is The Other Sue McKay. Writer and photographer. Influenced by poetic memoirs and photography of the 1960s and 70s, like that of Astrid Kirchher and Linda McCartney, both known for their association with The Beatles. The music of The Beatles and they themselves as individuals are great inspiration. Four working class lads each with their respective creative talents and desires, pursuing a dream, refusing the norm. I get that. I am fascinated with human nature. This thing called life intrigues me; I think and create from a place of wonder. My writing is honest. My photography is two-fold. Many weekends I’m photographing professional sport under the banner Kick It To Me Photography with images published internationally. The rest of the time I concentrate on exploring and self-publishing fine art imagery. My writing is also self-published.

I work freelance and can be contacted via email sue@kickittome.com
Images from my sports photography business Kick It To Me can be seen at www.kickittome.com

All content copyright Sue McKay unless otherwise stated.