World Travelling Alexanders

My Photo scholarship 2010 entry

Cambodia | Friday, October 8, 2010 | 5 photos

This series of photos was taken over two days while visiting Angkor in Cambodia in July 2010. To me they represent a full day at Angkor where you begin by seeing the sun rising behind a temple at the start of the day; and the little girl relaxing in another temple as the sun sets at the end of a long day exploring. In between, you have two young Cambodian girls watching the tourists come and go from on top of an ancient Khmer wall; the tree roots slowly, but surely, consuming the remaining temples; and the tiny fern growing out from between the bricks in the wall as the jungle continues to grow - this image particularly appealed to me as it was only a tiny plant in the wall of the massive temple complex, but I thought it was a simply stunning image that most people would have missed.
I am a passionate photographer while working full-time as a high school teacher in Bangkok, Thailand. I work hard to capture the scene as I see it, and find that I am constantly looking around with an eye for the next shot - this means that I take a lot of photos sometimes as I try to capture scenes around me the way I see them. None of my images were cropped in any way, and so are exactly as I saw each scene at the time of the photos being taken. The little girl in the doorway was the only posed shot, and occured to me as I climbed to the top of the temple and saw the opening looking out over the jungle as the sun was setting creating the soft yellow tones on the trees and the stones. I am always looking for new ways to explore the world through the lens of my camera; and also for ways to show others what I see. I hope I have been able to do that here as well. I would love to win this competition so that I could improve my photography skills while simultaneously exploring a country like Bhutan - a place I have long wanted to visit.