Of here and there

My Photo scholarship 2010 entry

Worldwide | Sunday, August 8, 2010 | 5 photos

Four years ago, I first picked up my camera in a new way. I had taken plenty of pretty images in the years prior, but this was the first time I had ever lifted my Nikon with the intent of depicting my world to others - of telling the story of what I saw. With that first assignment from my college paper, I became a photojournalist.

I’ve grown a lot in four years, both as a photojournalist and as a person. Being from a relatively small city in the American Midwest, I’ve traveled as far as the states can take me. I’ve come to appreciate the endless variety of culture and diversity that transforms our planet from a tiny microcosm of feuding peoples into a thriving collage of individuals, limited only by the scope of my experience and imagination.

I wish to push these boundaries of what I call this world, and present others with a visual experience that does the same for them. I believe it is of upmost importance that people in today’s societies experience parts of the world they have never seen. Without this exposure, peoples become self-centered and disregard the greater world of which we are all a functioning part.

This is why Bhutan interests me; it is a part of the world that only a very small cross section of the (at least westernized) world has seen. Some of my friends have never even heard of it. Instead of pulling up Wikipedia, what better way to inform others of the world than if I were able to point to my own images and say, “These are the Bhutanese. This is how they live. This is how they are a part of the greater world”.

I wish to travel to Bhutan to bring the experience back and share with others. The dissemination of knowledge about this small nation will give others a greater reverence for the world at large.