Yanni Dellaportas: A Life Shaped by Light, Weather, and Wonder

CHAT SESSION 140 with Yanni

Topic- Tides, Thunder, and Time: An Artist’s Relationship with Place

Monday 12^th January 2026 1pm https://rppfm.com.au

For Yanni Dellaportas, art has always been an act of creation against nothingness. As Justin Hayward of The Moody Blues once said, “Writing a song is literally creating something from nothing,” an idea that echoes through Yanni’s life - through music composed in solitude, images coaxed from storms, and stories patiently drawn from people, land, and sea.

Born on a hot December day in 1965 at the Bush Nursing Hospital in Mornington, Yanni was raised in nearby Mt Martha in a household shaped by two cultures. His immigrant parents - a Greek father and German mother - fostered a home where learning mattered and observation was quietly encouraged. It was a beginning tied deeply to place: sea air, shifting light, weather, and community - elements that would later become both his compass and his canvas.

From an early age, Yanni was drawn to imagination. Science Fiction captivated him through books, films, and the strange optimism of 1970s and ’80s television such as Doctor Who, Lost in Space and Star Trek. By the age of 12, he was already sketching futuristic ideas, translating what he saw in his mind onto paper.

Music followed soon after. His earliest soundtrack was his father’s Greek records and the hum of AM radio, but everything changed around 1979 when a close friend, Kris Rowe, gave him a cassette of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells. Then came Jean Michel Jarre, Vangelis, Klaus Schulze and Jethro Tull to name just a few - at a time when musical discovery required patience, curiosity and discipline. This commitment to self-directed learning became a hallmark of his creative life. “I remember hearing electronic music for the first time when I ‘borrowed’ a vinyl record from the drama room at Mornington High School around 1980,” he recalls. “It was Phaedra by Tangerine Dream, and it blew me away.”

He began guitar lessons at eleven, briefly studying under local legend Rob Pap, before teaching himself entirely. In the early 1980s - long before online tutorials - Yanni painstakingly recorded songs off the radio, wrote out lyrics by hand, and worked out chords by ear. The process was slow and focused, and that discipline would later define his approach across every creative field he embraced.

Photography entered his life in 1981 when his father gave him an old 35mm SLR camera. Film was expensive and every frame mattered. Yanni began quietly documenting the world around him - shorelines, weather, people, animals - unknowingly beginning a lifelong visual conversation with the Mornington Peninsula. Those early limitations taught him patience, intention, and respect for the image.

After unsuccessfully finishing Year 12 in 1984, Yanni’s path was anything but linear. He tried studying electronics at TAFE in 1985 and worked a wide range of jobs, from kitchen hand and bread delivery assistant to apprentice glazier, retail sales, and bank teller. Yet through every role, one truth followed him: the deepest satisfaction always came from creating art.

In 1986, Yanni travelled to Greece to experience his heritage, living in cities and island communities, and reconnecting with family. He returned after eight months with renewed optimism but reluctantly went back to high school in 1987 to attempt Year 12 again. Though unsuccessful academically, the experience proved pivotal - he met his future wife, Liz, in English class.

Initially self-taught through books, experimentation, and studying the work of others, formal studies at the Photography Studies College in Melbourne (1990) and Frankston TAFE (1992) gave him the confidence to step into professional work, beginning with wedding and Santa photography.

Curiosity, however, truly propelled him forward. In 1992, after discovering wild dolphins lived in his own watery backyard, Yanni joined the Dolphin Research Institute. Over the next decade, he photographed dolphins aboard vessels including Looking Good, Polperro, The Moonraker, and research boats. His images - among the first professional dolphin photographs taken in Port Phillip - were used in research, education, and public awareness campaigns. This work culminated in his first book, Dolphins of Port Phillip (2006), a testament to patience, environmental respect, and quiet devotion.

A serendipitous encounter soon shifted his path again. Journalist James Clarke-Kennedy wrote an article about Yanni photographing dolphins. Impressed, James invited Yanni to work as a newspaper stringer, initially covering sport from 1997. After contributing a front-page photograph of the gunnery at Flinders, his photojournalism career took hold. By the late 1990s, Yanni was working full-time for newspapers including The Independent News, The Mail, and later Fairfax, before joining the Mornington Peninsula News Group in 2012. There, he continues to work across multiple mastheads and magazines, including Peninsula Essence.

He became, by his own description, a quiet historian. “You get to know and understand the community you live in a lot better by sharing and capturing moments of people’s lives.” Faces, stories, and small local triumphs remain central to his work.

Alongside community stories, Yanni pursued the sublime. In 1985, as a teenager, he photographed his first thunderstorm rolling across the bay. He remembers the smell of ozone and the electricity on the water. What began as experimentation grew into a pioneering body of storm and lightning photography. Influenced by National Geographic and the late Peter Java, Yanni helped define the genre locally. This lifelong fascination culminated in Beautiful Storm (2020), a coffee-table book pairing his storm imagery with poetry from emerging and established writers.

Grounded in traditional darkroom practice, Yanni understood photography from negative to print, allowing a seamless transition into digital photography in the early 2000s. From there, his imagination expanded again into digital art: photorealistic science-fiction scenes combining his own landscapes with real toys and models from his collection. These images - often depicting abandoned machines quietly decaying - feel like fragments of forgotten futures. “Maybe they’ve just been waiting - a really long time,” he muses.

Music has always run parallel to his visual work. From performing in bands in the 1980s to electronic compositions under the name Bluzoid, Yanni has written, recorded, and produced music for decades. His album The Planet was released in 2011, followed by Water (2018) and Air (2020). In 2012, he co-founded the Celtic trio SugaTree, playing mandolin and recording both an EP and a full-length album. In 2018, SugaTree won Best Album and Best New Celtic Act at the Australian Celtic Festival in Glen Innes.

In recent years, Yanni has expanded into filmmaking, as director, cinematographer, editor, and composer on around 80 short films and music videos. His work - including collaborations with creative partner Heather Forbes-McKeon, has earned awards at film festivals in Australia and around the world.

Despite these achievements, Yanni remains grounded in a simple belief: art matters. He often quotes Nietzsche “We have art so that we shall not die of reality” alongside Picasso’s “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life,” Art is everywhere - in science, engineering, architecture, clothing, homes, film, and life itself. It provokes, comforts, confuses, angers, and inspires. It makes us care.

This belief led him to sponsor the Year 11 Excellence in Art Award at Rosebud Secondary College and the YanniCreative Art Scholarship at Western Port Secondary College, giving back to future generations. He firmly believes creativity underpins all disciplines, including STEM, and that imagination is essential to shaping the future.

Guided by curiosity and care, Yanni continues to create - quietly proving that art helps us endure reality, understand one another, and imagine what might still be possible.

Here’s how you can “follow Yanni creatively” — whether you want to keep up with his music, his artistic projects, and his creative world as a fan or as someone inspired by his artistic journey:

Website: https://www.yannicreative.com.au

Website: https://www.twotailspublishing.com

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/yannicreative

Facebook   https://www.facebook.com/yanni.dellaportas

My hope is that when you’re looking at yourself in the

‘The Daily Mirror’

YOU SMILE

EMBRACE BEING YOU

AND FIND 10 MINUTES IN YOUR DAY TO NOURISH YOUR SOUL!

To get in touch with Cathy email smileinthedailymirror@gmail.com

'The Daily Mirror' acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the Traditional Custodians of the land and acknowledges and pays respect to their Elders, past and present.