By the time he left high school at 17, Matt Palmer had been building websites for eight years and he’d been getting paid for his work. ‘I was working with people online, so they didn't really know how old I was’, he said. While others his age were contemplating University, he was already thinking about escaping the tenuous life of a freelancer, always chasing the next commission, for something with regular hours and a steady income.
After a brief stint as a junior designer with a community project specialist design house, he landed a position with the Royal Children’s Hospital Foundation. ‘I was hired as a designer, but I knew that I had some photographic ability. I was taking portraits of sick and injured children and other activities around the hospital like scientific research – which was pretty helpful in terms of teaching me how to interact with people, while also learning more about photography.’
When the Global Financial Crisis hit in 2007-2008, Matt was working as a Senior Designer for the Queensland Department
