A hike through New Zealand

My Photo scholarship 2010 entry

Worldwide | Friday, October 15, 2010 | flickr photos

Travel is something that I have always been passionate about, but it seems I either didn’t have the time or I didn’t have the money. Finally after I graduated college, the two lined up and I set off on a six month journey to explore Australia and New Zealand with my best friend. We didn’t always have a plan or know what we were getting into, but sometimes that was the best part. We stumbled into a 5 day hike in Kahurangi National Park, and most of my photographs are from that hike. My place would best be described as New Zealand. I hope that my photos demonstrate a new found curiosity in nature. In our society it is so easy to disconnect from nature and live in a world of computers, internet, and video games. I found myself there, fortunately through my trip I was able to reconnect with the environment. I think this exemplifies the unique opportunity travel photography presents us with. You can document a “place” for example, and use that as a medium to inspire people to visit that place, or at least give them a connection to that “place”. Those connections are important because it is harder to destroy something you have a connection with. I want to use my photography as a tool to help people reconnect with the environment as I did. I still have a lot to learn about photography, but in this competition I think that is almost a positive because I don’t have any predetermined notions and I am very teachable. The best part of this scholarship is it would give me the skills I need to jump start a career in this field. Regardless of the outcome I will continue to create and try to inspire. Thank you for the opportunity.