Brett Patman never set out to be a photographer.
He began his career as a tradesman, working inside some of Australia's factories, power stations and other industrial sites. Photography was always his side passion.
Patman explains how I bought my camera in 2011 and I didn't know what to do. I was just starting out like taking photos of the skyline and city and just standard postcard pictures that everyone has seen a million times. I was just racking my brain to think: What would be a bit more interesting than this? It turned out that the answer was hiding in plain sight.
Patman began documenting his visits to industrial sites. But it was an out-of-use site that piqued his interest - the abandoned Bradmill Denim factory in Yarraville, a suburb of Melbourne.
He walked through an open section of the fence and began snapping pictures. He didn't know at the time that he had just set his life on a new course.
Patman has been traveling to abandoned places all over Australia to take photos - not just factories, wool sheds, a former homeless camp, and more. It's now his full time career.
The dribble of comments turned into a flood after Patman posted his pictures from the shuttered Wangi Power Station in New South Wales.
There was this influx of workers and families and the families of the workers and brothers and moms and dads and everyone was just chiming in and saying, 'Oh, look.' I used to work in that room. I used to work in that workshop. Do you remember Bob who ran the store? Patman says God was hard to deal with.
There were not always positive memories attached to them.
One of the most controversial shootings Patman has done was at the Callan Park Hospital for the Insane, a former mental institution in the Sydney area. A government commission into the hospital found a widespread culture of abuse there.
At one event where Patman was presenting some of his photographs, a woman in the audience spoke up, saying her brother had been physically abused there and it wasn't appropriate to take artistic pictures of a place where so many bad things had happened.
Patman acknowledges how many bad things took place at Callan Park, but believes it's important to document the bad as much as the good.
He says that recording history is important. If it encourages people who had a part of that history to come out and say something, then that is worth it.