Tasmanian photographer Tim Crawshaw's story behind the Bay of Fires Collection

When I was on my own looking for the next shot I got to contemplate society for what it actually is, because I actually went off grid for a while and all these strange things started happening to me.

I grew up in a Christian family - mum was the first female Anglican priest in Tasmania by alphabetical order.

I grew up learning about the importance of service to others less fortunate.

She died about five years ago and when she died all this weird stuff starting happening to me spiritually.

The first time I really felt like photography was a spiritual, co-operative kind of thing with God was when I drove this one long time to the Bay of Fires. I got there and it was overcast and the colours just don’t come out when it’s grey – I was frustrated.

I just said to myself ‘stuff it, I’ve got nothing to lose, I’ll say a prayer’ - I’ll ask God to actually open up the clouds for me.

So I did and nothing happened, and then I turned around and I just couldn’t believe what I saw in the south-east, it was this blue sky forming in a complete perfect circle and I just thought to myself ‘that’s great, it’s over there but I want it over here’.

But then I thought ‘oh, the wind’s blowing this way’ and I’m not joking, the time that I had to wait for that blue sky to come over and the sun to come out was all the prep time I needed to find the best vantage spots and that’s when I thought ‘we’re in this together, this is a team effort’.

There’s a story I talk about on my website and that was just mad.

I had this supernatural experience and it was like this raging torrent of spiritual water going through me, it was like a portal opened up in (my stomach) and it went straight through me.

If you can imagine everything that is good – love, peace, joy, light - just put into a substance of water and bang.

I was just blown away by that experience because for the first time I intuitively knew that I wasn’t from here - it sounds crazy but I knew that earth wasn’t my real home and that this is a temporary thing. All I can say what’s happened is that every single part of me as a social person, even my intellect has been stripped back, it’s been removed.

Who I am in a social sense ceased to be and I can tell you that when that happened to me it was very hard to come back to normal life. I was going to church at the time but no-one was actually really able to tell me what was going on.

It wasn’t until I came across a scripture in the bible about a year or two years later and it’s Jesus saying this, he goes ‘when I come into a person, out of a person will flow rivers of living water’ so that was that.

That was the actual experience and from that moment I was illuminated, I was enlightened, I couldn’t go back.

When that happened to me I wanted to push the button and make it happen again, but it didn’t happen like that because God chooses when he turns these things on.

Whenever people have these crazy mystical experiences like this they’re driven out to make a difference, so I wrote two books.

The first one I wrote is called So, You Want to Be Rich... But Jesus Doesn't.

It challenges materialistic success as the meaning of life in the western secular world and it's been endorsed by Tim Costello, Father Bob, the photographer Gary Chapman, and others.

The second is called Staying True to Yourself at Work.

We’re conditioned to think that we can only feel good about ourselves or consider ourselves successful if we have s***loads of money and the Merc and all that crap.

The research says that doesn’t actually make people happy, but still people go chasing it.

You know how some people are in jobs and they go ‘this is crap, this is not who I am, this is not me’ and spend their entire lives performing a role that is completely different to their true selves? With me now, there’s no internal conflict because my core values are expressed through my work as an author and photographer, it’s where my spirituality and my creativity merges.

I don’t think anyone’s done a collection dedicated to the Bay of Fires area. I’m not aware of another one, so I felt I needed to collate some kind of dedication to its beauty because I believe it’s the most beautiful area in the world.

Just north of Eddystone Point, where the Bay of Fires walk goes in that Mount William section, there’s no one there, it’s just sensational and when I go out there, I feel incredible. I cease to be me in the sense that I’ve totally merged with my environment and I kind of forget myself.

From a very young age I always wanted to know, if I lost my job tomorrow, who would I be?

And instead of waiting for that to happen I actually went after that - because I needed to know who I am in a divine sense, not with any social lens put on me, I wanted to know the truth of my reality and who I was, the way that I was divinely made.

What I figured out was that my real identity - not that I’m a photographer or an artist, that’s a social  construction - who I am on an innate level is woven in the fabric of God, the Holy Spirit and Jesus.

(The collection) been taken over a period of about seven years, so it’s very hard to choose which ones to keep.

These images serve as signposts and markers in my spiritual life – I remember I was like this when I did that - it’s like a chronological insight into my spiritual development when I look at those images.

I kind of want to extrapolate and combine the pictures with some of the spiritual experiences I’ve had in my life because I think secularism is really snuffing out people’s desire to tell their spiritual stories – it’s just not safe.

But I’m not coming from a religion or church point-of-view, I’m coming from a pure, spiritual Jesus point-of-view without any religion kind of stuff.

I want to share these stories because this is what’s happened to me, it’s not about preaching or anything like that, it’s just … ‘I’ve had a pretty interesting life, this is what’s happened’.

Jesus says you don’t light a lamp and stick it under a bed where it can’t be seen - I want these stories to be heard and I can do it and not be criticised as an artist because there’s no right or wrong in art.

I’m very normal believe it or not – I sound like a space cadet but I’m just a normal guy.

I like fart jokes, I like fishing, I’m outdoorsy, but I just can’t deny how God has worked in my life.