UP Creative

It’s a common occurrence for a security guard and a bartender to become friends. Working in the bar scene can be tough, but as Kellie Greaves and Will Cook soon found it helped them move on from the hospitality industry and start the creative business they’d always dreamed of.
With a background in cinematography and photography, Will was in the perfect place to take Kellie on as a business partner and nurture her passion for photography.
Now four years on, the duo share roles in photography and film, though their passion for cinematography often filters into their photography work.
“I see everything like I see it as a film and I think that’s why our photographs are different,” Will says.
“I’ve trained Kellie not to see as a photographer but as a cinematographer and getting drama into the images by framing it like it’s a film frame. We’ve all grown up with movies so when you see that look, you know it and you equate it to a big budget production and not just a happy snap. We want cinematic.”
One of the great things about UP Creative, aside from their work itself, is they haven’t pigeon-holed themselves into a certain genre of photography.
“The thing about our business is that we pretty much love everything we do,” Will says.
“As soon as we’re pulled in a certain direction we can’t help it we just think, ‘Let’s do this’,” Kellie says.
As a result their skills are varied and are a unique offering to the photography scene in Geelong. Not boxing themselves in has allowed them to take on music gigs, baptisms, fashion shoots, boxing matches, birthdays and most recently a surfing tutorial with Mick Fanning for Audi Australia.
“Getting a gig with a client that big was huge for us,” Will says.

“We were working with awesome people, we were down at the beach and pretty much had free reign to bring our vision to it and just had so much fun with it.”
Talking with both Kellie and Will it’s easy to see that they’re minds simply don’t switch off, and the two are the first to recognise this. Will confesses to dreaming during the day and creating his life into a film while Kellie is constantly taking photos with her eyes.
Clearly passionate about what they do, Kellie even took to getting her camera tattooed on her forearm (so it could be seen when she was taking photos) to celebrate UP Creatives first year.
“It was a celebratory tattoo,” Kellie says. “It’s just a quick sketch that I did and when [the tattooist] saw it he was like, ‘That’s exactly what we’re doing’.”
For both Kellie and Will, the joy comes from capturing those candid moments that happen in the blink of an eye.
“We want to capture those moments that only happen for a quarter of a second, someone seeing their best friend in the corner of a club and losing their mind,” Will says.
“We had one where this couple were at Bended on Australia Day and they just came out of nowhere. She just came sprinting out of the crowd and dive-bombed this guy in a massive hug and I just happened to capture that moment. You can feel it in the image how awesome that moment is. These two people are connecting and that’s the stuff we want to be capturing and be known for.”
Aside from creating a name for themselves for capturing candid moments, UP Creative want to start making their own unique content and increasing the amount of film projects they’re working on.
With his background in film, Will even confesses he hopes to create a number of his own short films. For now, the two will continue taking incredible films and photos and working toward the bigger picture.
“The strength of us is that we don’t have any cookie cutter, ‘This is the way we do it and we need to do it every single time’. We’re just two artists who can take beautiful images and we just go and play,” Will says.
You can get in contact with UP Creative via their Facebook or website.
Written by Amanda Sherring