About Michael Plumridge

Born in Melbourne Australia in 1961, Michael has been taking photos for more than half his lifetime. Spanning 30 years since 1981 when Michael bought his first serious 35mm SLR camera. After leaving school at the age of 15 years old to pursue a career in the building trade, Michael went on to do an apprenticeship as a carpenter. After doing 3 1/2 years of his apprenticeship he managed to get himself a job at Channel Ten Melbourne as a cameraman working on such shows as Prisoner, Holiday Island, live variety shows, and News and Sport.

For the next 3 years, Michael learnt all the tricks and technique's about video camera's, composition and lighting and went on a few years later to become a fulltime photographer for the same television network. Working on more shows like Neighbours, Country Practice and Take 40 TV he then gained the experience of working with major celebrities and the demands of producing extremely high quality film stills in a very short time frame. Now using all that knowledge and experience his appetite for traveling the world to photograph the most beautiful places and people was high on the list of priorities.

In 1992, Michael's brother Rick who is a graphic designer introduced him to the world of Macintosh computers and Photoshop retouching. After investing $28,000.00 on his first computer system and spending the next 6 months working out of an advertising agency, Michael was fortunate enough to be surrounded by digital and computer guru's. His knowledge in this area exploded as the learning curve was vertical since digital cameras had just hit the market. For the next 20 years he has spent 50,000 hours in Photoshop and loves the full control he has over all of his images.

Doing some 45 shoots overseas in the last 5 years in places like The Cook Islands, Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, Loyalty Islands, Greek Islands, Tunisia, Bahamas, Thailand and Las Vegas, Michael now lives and works between the Gold Coast of Australia and Las Vegas, USA.

Michael's work is published worldwide in magazines such as MAXIM, PLAYBOY, FHM, ZOO, GQ and ARENA just to name a few. Images can be purchased through www.picdesk.com and www.harlem.com.au.