02.01.2026
Community
Northern Nature
Some creatives arrive at their practice through discipline. Others, through instinct. For the Sydney-raised, Northern Rivers-based photographer Ming Nomchong, her calling has always been the latter: a pull towards light, open space, water and the quiet frequency of coastal life.
On a recent four-day trip through the northern NSW region, we captured a content series with Nomchong that highlighted the beauty of the landscapes and our amenity partners that are shaped by them.
Moving from Brunswick Heads to Yamba, it became clear why her work feels so deeply rooted here: her understanding of the coastline shaped the shoot as much as the camera itself, guiding us toward the moments that became the backbone of our content series.
Ming Nomchong, photographer
“I’ve been in the Northern Rivers for 15 years — long enough to witness the region shift, shaped by the artists, designers, and small businesses who have steadily built a community here.”
Her connection to the region runs deeper than convenience; it’s a chosen pace, one she has no intention of trading for anything more frenetic. “Am I here forever?” Nomchong ponders. “Yeah, I think so… I love coming back here for the quiet of nature. I've got wallabies in the backyard.”
Spend as little as a day with her and this makes perfect sense. The beaches and bush tracks, the surf breaks, the early mornings — they are all part of her process. The region offers both stimulus and solitude, a rhythm of slowing down enough to notice the things others might walk past. That instinct for observation, almost meditative in its pace, is embedded in everything she photographs.
Ask Nomchong about her favourite surf spots and the answers are instant — Broken Head or Belongil, depending on the swell. The choice speaks to the same ease that defines her work: unforced, grounded in what feels right that day.
Her life here is lived outside: barefoot, always moving between saltwater and open air. She prefers sunrise to sunset, a morning surf over anything indoors, and will always choose film over digital.
Slowing down and learning how to trust the instinct that keeps pulling her back to nature imbues Nomchong’s photographs. The hours she spends in or near the ocean — swimming, surfing, watching the horizon — are as much the work as when she wields a camera. They sharpen her eye and leave enough quiet for ideas to surface.
She remembers the moment she picked up her first camera in art school — a Hasselblad she still owns — and feeling a kind of kismet. But her path wasn’t predetermined. While friends moved quickly into degrees and careers, Nomchong followed only what she loved: art, photography and the pull towards images that felt open and elemental. Her work, then and now, revolves around those same themes of space, light, the human form and the natural world — always approached with a romantic, subtly nostalgic sensibility.
